Tag: interest
How the Fed’s inflation battle is already slamming the economy
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/27/what-fed-rate-increases-really-mean-00048042
The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/28/inflation-interest-rates-thomas-hoenig-federal-reserve-526177
Fed’s Powell pumped trillions into the economy. Now, he may be the party killer.
“The Fed has penciled in three rate hikes this year, and the first could come as soon as March.”
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“Adam Ozimek, chief economist at freelancing platform Upwork, said the Fed misjudged how large the inflation spike would be, though he still thinks — as the Fed previously argued — that price increases will eventually start to cool on their own. He said the danger instead is that the Fed will overreact to levels of inflation that ultimately prove temporary, hurting the millions who still haven’t returned to the labor force.
“Inflation is by any measure extremely high, yet labor slack remains significant as well and we are far from full employment,” he said. “The policy challenge is far more complicated than in 2018, when Powell faced uncertainty about labor slack but without the added pressure of high inflation.”
Still, others have praised the Fed’s restraint amid the price spikes, keeping rates low and allowing the job market to heal more quickly. They argue that inflation is significantly being fed by supply chain issues that the central bank isn’t equipped to solve.
Former Fed Chair William McChesney Martin once said the central bank’s job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” But Sahm argued that a few rate increases don’t have to ruin anything.
“Things are getting better,” she said. “We need to pour a little less punch in the punch bowl.””
Turks Flee to Gold, Bitcoin, and Foreign Currency as Government Devalues Lira
“The reason for the plunging lira is no secret. In contrast to virtually every economist on the planet, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists that low interest rates and cheap money fuel a thriving economy that fights inflation. His claims—dubbed “insane” in some quarters—don’t seem to have done much for the value of the currency. Nevertheless, he sticks to his policy and fires officials who disagree.
Instead, what Erdogan has actually accomplished is a surging money supply that dilutes the value of the lira and has driven Turks to despair.”
Biden made one of the best decisions of his presidency this week
“Powell’s innovation as Fed chair was to really care much more about employment, relative to inflation, than his recent predecessors had.
In 2019, he began lowering interest rates during an economic expansion, a genuinely unprecedented action that conceded the rate hikes he introduced the previous year were a mistake.
He repeatedly invoked homelessness and high Black unemployment as reasons to keep pushing rates lower, saying the job wasn’t done until it was done for everyone.
In 2020, he issued a new formal framework explicitly pushing the Fed away from its traditional fixation with inflation and toward worrying about employment.
He made these changes in the context of a world where inflation was consistently low and employment and wages were short of where they should’ve been. But in 2020, and especially 2021, the tasks before Powell changed. First he had to prevent a pandemic-driven collapse of the global financial system akin to what occurred in 2008.
Then he was — is — faced with the question of what to do now that inflation is high for the first time in decades. That challenge, and the question of whether Powell can be as effective at controlling inflation as he has been at promoting employment, will frame his next term.”
Inflation Will Make Government Budget Problems Worse
“inflation is real. The all-item consumer price index (CPI) was up more than 5 percent on a year-over-year basis for July, August, and September, and now shows a 6.2 percent increase for October—the largest jump since 1990. The Fed considers 2 percent inflation to be its bright-line monetary policy goal. Obviously, there is a large gap between that and what we are seeing on the ground.”
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“Individuals whose salaries, wages, Social Security payments, and even mortgage interest or rental rates are automatically adjusted for inflation have much less to worry about than their neighbors on fixed salaries, who must cope with ballooning grocery bills or pay twice as much at the pump. On these grounds, inflation may be devastating for some and almost meaningless for others. These gaps widen as inflation gets worse.”
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“The rate of inflation gets captured in interest rates that borrowers must pay, especially for longer-term debt. Lenders hope to be paid back with at least as much purchasing power. If they believe inflation will tick away at 4 percent, interest rates tend to rise with this baked-in expectation.
In any case, higher interest rates mean higher interest costs on all forms of public and private debt. As a result, mortgage rates will rise, all forms of construction will suffer, and businesses will postpone making large investments in plants and equipment.
Now consider the public debt—especially the federal debt that ballooned from large deficits in recent years. (In 2020, federal revenues were $3.4 trillion and spending was $6.6 trillion.) The interest cost of the national debt in 2008 was $253 billion and remained at about that level through 2015. Even though the debt doubled in those years, sharply falling interest rates and low inflation worked to contain costs.
But that was yesterday. With today’s higher inflation and rising interest rates (perhaps with more to come), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the interest cost of public debt to be $413 billion in 2021. Obviously, any dollar spent on interest cannot be spent on government benefits and services to taxpayers.”
Banks don’t want your money right now
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22711598/savings-interest-rates-low-banks
Does Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Destroy National Debt Concerns? SOURCES.
The Real News Podcast – Modern Monetary Theory – A Debate Between Randall Wray and Gerald Epstein The Real News. 2019. https://www.spreaker.com/user/therealnews/the-real-news-podcast-modern-monetary-th Is MMT “America First” Economics? Gerald Epstein. 3 20 2019. Institute for New Economic Thinking. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/is-mmt-america-first-economics On Modern Monetary Theory
YOU are a welfare queen. Middle Class Welfare. Mortgage Interest Deduction. : Sources
Policy Basics: Federal Tax Expenditures 11 18 2019. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-federal-tax-expenditures The biggest U.S. tax breaks Drew Desilver. 4 6 2016. Pew Research Center Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2019-2023. 12 18 2019. The Joint