In the end, Kevin Warsh's Federal Reserve acquitted itself well. For all the uncertainty he had sparked at the previous meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, when he refused to provide any indication of what he was prepared to do to tame stubborn inflation, the chair on Wednesday presided over a unanimous decision to raise interest rates for the first time in three years.
"Today's action starts to show that we're serious about this," he said at the press conference after the meeting, with "this" meaning inflation in excess of the Fed's 2% target for over five years. Welcome though it was, his embrace of economic orthodoxy nonetheless did little to dispel the Keystone Cops quality of governance in Donald Trump's US.
Warsh's resolve – raising rates just a few weeks before elections that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress – appeared even more resolute in the face of a veiled threat from White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett, who pointed out to his chums on Fox that "if you want an independent Fed, then one thing the Fed does is it stays out of the way of elections".
The central bankers' parsimonious comments in the press conference following the meeting made a sharp contrast with the more unhinged commentary from other members of the administration, including the president himself, who earlier this month celebrated the resilience of the labor market with a mind-boggling threat to "STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT" unless the Fed cut interest rates.
Trump has yet to turn on Warsh in the way he did on his predecessor, Jerome "numbskull" Powell. But the signs are ominous. After the rate hike, Trump went ballistic – spewing more of the random, incoherent thoughts that have become his trademark. "Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World," he wrote on social media, despite recalcitrant inflation and a budget deficit that is likely to exceed $2tn this year. He again demanded the powers that be to "LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!"
#rates #federal #states
"Today's action starts to show that we're serious about this," he said at the press conference after the meeting, with "this" meaning inflation in excess of the Fed's 2% target for over five years. Welcome though it was, his embrace of economic orthodoxy nonetheless did little to dispel the Keystone Cops quality of governance in Donald Trump's US.
Warsh's resolve – raising rates just a few weeks before elections that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress – appeared even more resolute in the face of a veiled threat from White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett, who pointed out to his chums on Fox that "if you want an independent Fed, then one thing the Fed does is it stays out of the way of elections".
The central bankers' parsimonious comments in the press conference following the meeting made a sharp contrast with the more unhinged commentary from other members of the administration, including the president himself, who earlier this month celebrated the resilience of the labor market with a mind-boggling threat to "STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT" unless the Fed cut interest rates.
Trump has yet to turn on Warsh in the way he did on his predecessor, Jerome "numbskull" Powell. But the signs are ominous. After the rate hike, Trump went ballistic – spewing more of the random, incoherent thoughts that have become his trademark. "Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World," he wrote on social media, despite recalcitrant inflation and a budget deficit that is likely to exceed $2tn this year. He again demanded the powers that be to "LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!"
#rates #federal #states
12 hours ago
