Posted on 05/23/2018 3:48:05 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures index, currently is at 1.9 percent, while the headline rate including energy and food prices is at 2 percent. Fed officials described wage pressures as "moderate" though it noted there has been more pressure in industries where labor supply is tightening.
Fed officials see 2 percent inflation as a level that sustains economic growth without putting too much upward pressure on prices.
After seven years of keeping its benchmark interest rate near zero, the FOMC began raising rates in December 2015, with the current target range at 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent.
As the economy has seen growth above its recovery trend and inflation inches its way toward the Fed's goal, market participants have been speculating on how quickly the Fed will continue to hike and when it will stop. A few members stated that the Fed is getting close to its "neutral" goal of setting a rate that is neither constrictive nor overly expansionary to growth.
Though Fed officials indicated in March that a total of three rate hikes this year were likely, traders in the fed funds futures market in recent days briefly put chances of a fourth hike above 50 percent. That probability has since declined to about 43 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
If you read the Mandate for the FED it says that the FED is to maintain Zero percent. But the FED never had any respect for the law and it works for bankers. Not the American people.
At least with interest rates up, I think I’m making money (even though I’m not!).
Normally they find a reason to clamp it off for Republican Presidents.
(The somewhat good news is that Japan's government owns almost half of that debt, unlike China owning most of ours.)
> At least with interest rates up, I think I’m making money (even though I’m not!). <
I recently got a flyer from my local bank. They suggested that I open a “Junior Savings Account” for my children or grandchildren. The flyer said it would teach the child a lesson about the importance of saving.
The Junior Savings Account pays an interest rate of 0.10% (that’s not a misprint). So if a kid deposits, say, $50 he’ll get a nickel in interest each year.
I suppose that would teach the kid a lesson. But probably not the one the bank was hoping for.
Economic confusion abounds espically on the Left, among the feds, and in the FED.
Inflation is a hidden tax that drags down individual and aggregate quality of life and the economy as a whole.
The $4 trillion mostly unconstitutional feds don’t care. Nevertheless, the feds and their money printing machines are the ONLY source of inflation.
Dismantle the $3 trillion + unconstitutional portion of the feds and inflation would greatly if not totally disappear. Sustained prices would probably start going down for the first time since early 1900’s due to an uninflated money supply.
Indeed!
The banks still pay a very low interest rate, but 6-month T-Bills are up to 2% (annual).
You can buy them through the Internet, and hold them in a US Treasury e-account.
So your savings and wages get destroyed by 2% per year.
Burns my behind that they do that and worse, that people don't understand it but instead keep reacting to shelf price rather than unit price.
“But the FED never had any respect for the law and it works for bankers.”
The bankers set it up. Legalized theft.
Sure doesn’t measure gasoline.
Idiotic. You don’t monkey with inflation. It gets away from you, and you get stagflation. Ask Nixon how that worked out.
The Maduro Maneuver.
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If you read the Mandate for the FED it says that the FED is to maintain Zero percent. But the FED never had any respect for the law and it works for bankers. Not the American people.
>
Fed ‘mandate’?? I’m still trying to figure where Congress has ANY authority to bequeath Constitutional authority to ANY unelected entity, the gold confiscation of the early 20th, ‘anything BUT gold and silver’, etc.
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The problem is the debt. Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio has been way too high for a while now (245%... ~$12T Debt/$5T GDP)... and thanks to Obama, ours is now about 110% (~$20T Debt/$18T GDP). Servicing the debt becomes more expensive as interest rates go up. We may be able to handle it, but Japan will have the much greater challenge... and Japan is large enough to have a global impact if they cannot stay afloat.
(The somewhat good news is that Japan’s government owns almost half of that debt, unlike China owning most of ours.)
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No. The problem is unconstitutional taxation and SPENDING.
There needn’t exist a ‘debt’ (or, long for any length of time) were the Constitution followed.
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