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Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

federalreserve.gov

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Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#51

Now if we can only get states (like California) to stop giving out stimulus payments (they literally calling it inflation stimulus; learn economics 101) and drop student debt forgiveness nonsense. The fed is trying to curb inflation, while politicians are trying to get re-elected at any cost, fighting the fed.

The student debt issue is a complicated one that we shouldn't want to recreate, but I don't see how debt forgiveness on education is nonsense.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#52

Still a very low rate by historic standards. We've got a ways to go.

It was about 6.5% in the 1998 recession and 5.25% in the 2007 great recession. It's unlikely we will head into a recession anytime soon. Numbers are all over the place, but I see most of it as temporary (Covid, Gas Prices) and not structural or risky behavior from investment banks in 2007. Remind me if I'm wrong, but I think inflation will drastically drop next report.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#53

Now if we can only get states (like California) to stop giving out stimulus payments (they literally calling it inflation stimulus; learn economics 101) and drop student debt forgiveness nonsense. The fed is trying to curb inflation, while politicians are trying to get re-elected at any cost, fighting the fed.

> Now if we can only get states (like California) to stop giving out stimulus payments (they literally calling it inflation stimulus; I agree with you on this. They're ostensibly to help people afford to buy more gasoline. We should let the high gas prices change behavior instead. > drop student debt forgiveness nonsense. Not sure I agree with you on this. While I don't think it would be a great idea to forgive all s…

>We should let the high gas prices change behavior instead.

Yeah, quit their jobs to save money on the commute.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#54

what does this mean/imply: > In addition, the Committee will continue reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities

The linked Implementation Note says $60B / month of Treasury and $17.5B / month of MBS, with the latter doubling to $35B / month in September.

The Implementation Note says it only applies as principal is paid, so this is an upper bound.

According to the maturity distribution at https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/ the Fed has effectively all of its MBS with maturity > 1 year, with the vast majority over 10 years.

AFAIK we don't have any other maturity information that "over 10 years", but I might assume it's 20 years on average because it's uniformly distributed between 10-30 years (AFAIK 30 years is typically the max mortgage time in the US). Dividing $2.7 trillion by 240 months gives $11.25 billion per month.

Which implies an increase of the cap from $17.5B to $35B is a no-op, as rollover would already be maxed a little over $11B. So why bother?

Any bond / Fed experts able to shine a light on what's wrong with my numbers?

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#55
post #29

I don't get it. The price of gas I'm paying in the US, has dropped by 20% in the last month or so. That seems to indicate that prices are going back to normal. What prices is fed concerned about?

The price of labor. Their goal is to suppress wages. Gotta put workers back in their place or the whole system collapses.

Inflation hurts labor, not the wealthy. Bill Gates doesn't care if his groceries are 10% more expensive.

Inflation is outpacing wage increases so effective wages are actually lower in terms of buying power.

Housing is getting more expensive at a faster rate than wages are increasing.

If you are pro-labor you want the fed to aggressively raise rates because that makes life harder for business.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#56
anyone know of bullet-proof analyses into central banking policy out there?

after dealing with crypto projects that offer high interest rates, and do so by just inflating their token supply, fed policy seems magical to me. the fed’s offering you yield on your dollars, and that yield comes from printing new dollars (right? there’s no tax increase as part of this announcement). your share of dollars stays constant. so why is it that paying nominal interest on dollars makes people want to buy and hold onto them? how is it that inflating the supply via this one particular method strengthens the dollar? how do you model these things?

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#57
post #29

I don't get it. The price of gas I'm paying in the US, has dropped by 20% in the last month or so. That seems to indicate that prices are going back to normal. What prices is fed concerned about?

The price of labor. Their goal is to suppress wages. Gotta put workers back in their place or the whole system collapses.

Yes, Space X.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#58

I'm skeptical that interest rate hikes will curb inflation. I'm even skeptical that a recession will curb inflation. We have significant shortages of so many products and services that people rely on and the only way I see the situation improving is if supplies increase, maybe dramatically. It's too difficult to curb demand for things like food and housing if the population is growing. Those are things we just need t…

It's almost like you are encouraging supply side economics... aka... trickle down

We need to massively cut corporate taxes, investment taxes, regulations, and all manner of things to increase supply. The government has been attacking business for so long we are in quite the hole.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#59
post #29

I don't get it. The price of gas I'm paying in the US, has dropped by 20% in the last month or so. That seems to indicate that prices are going back to normal. What prices is fed concerned about?

Gas is highly volatile on a good day and we're coming off of an exceptionally high spike. 20% off of a high that's ~2x what it was a year ago and ~3x what it was a year before that. Gas prices will likely continue on a generally downward arc. The shape/timeline of the arc nobody knows and how low it will go nobody knows. I doubt it will hit the 2s nationally.

Energy in the general sense underpins the entire economy but there is so much more on top of that making inflation more complex.

Re: Federal Reserve to increase interest rates by 75 basis points

#60

Now if we can only get states (like California) to stop giving out stimulus payments (they literally calling it inflation stimulus; learn economics 101) and drop student debt forgiveness nonsense. The fed is trying to curb inflation, while politicians are trying to get re-elected at any cost, fighting the fed.

Raising taxes on the wealthy could offset any changes to the money supply caused by a slightly more generous welfare state. An obvious solution.
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