Fed Raises Interest Rates a Quarter-Point, Highest Levels Since 2007

The Federal Reserve hiked its target federal-funds interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point Wednesday, the ninth in a series of hikes that started in March 2022.

The hike brings Fed’s target rate to a range between 4.75 percent and 5 percent with the Fed maintaining its pace of slowed increase. Most economists expected a quarter-point interest-rate hike in an effort to bring inflation down, but the current banking calamities contributed to the possibility of a pause, according to Bloomberg.

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Fed Hike Rates .025 Percent as Inflation Fears Loom

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised interest rates by 25 basis points, issuing an 0.25 percent hike in line with earlier expectations in a move that signals a rate slowdown in the Fed’s fight against inflation. The Fed said in a statement that its Federal Open Market Committee “anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range” will still be necessary “in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time,” a sign that the central bank will be looking to more rate hikes in the near future.

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Fed Likely to Raise Interest Rates, But at a Less Aggressive Rate

The Federal Reserve is likely to further slow its historically aggressive pace of interest rate hikes at its Wednesday meeting as inflation cools, but consumers will still feel the pinch of higher interest rates, according to economists who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Fed is likely to hike interest rate hikes by just 0.25 percentage points after its Wednesday meeting, setting the range for its target federal-funds rate to between 4.5% and 4.75%, due to slowing inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. Although consumers may see some relief from inflation as a result of the Fed’s rate hikes, they might give back some of those gains as heightened interest rates drive up borrowing costs, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni told the DCNF.

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Commentary: The Fed’s Interest Rate Hikes Have only Destroyed $398 Billion of the $6 Trillion It Printed

“Our expectation has been we would begin to see inflation come down, largely because of supply side healing.  We haven’t. We have seen some supply side healing but inflation has not really come down.”

That was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Sept. 21, speaking to reporters following the central bank’s meeting where the Federal Funds Rate was once again increased 0.75 percent to its current range of 3 percent to 3.25 percent in a bid to combat sticky 8.3 percent consumer inflation the past year.

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Biden Administration Accused of Gaslighting Nation with ‘Soviet Level Propaganda’ After Attempting to Redefine Recession

by Debra Heine   The White House is being accused of gaslighting the American people with “Soviet levels of propaganda” as Biden officials attempt to change the definition of recession amid economic data that shows the United States is entering into a recession. A recession is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. The GDP in the first quarter of 2022 shrank at an annual pace of -1.6 percent—far worse than the mild increase analysts had expected. The numbers for second-quarter economic growth will be announced Thursday morning, and they are expected to be ugly. The Atlanta Fed is projecting another -1.6% decline, meaning we have officially entered into a recession—unless we broaden the definition of recession. “What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” Biden’s economic team said in a post on the White House website on July 21. “Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely…

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Barry Loudermilk Attacks Biden’s ‘War on American Energy’

Georgia’s 11th Congressional District (GA11) Representative, Barry Loudermilk, criticized President Joe Biden and the EPA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Budget on Tuesday.

“Biden’s war on American energy production is getting an assist from the Democrat-led Congress in the FY23 Interior and EPA appropriations package. [It] restricts offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and restricts new projects in designated areas of the continental shelf,” Loudermilk said.

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Commentary: The Treacherous Road to Runaway Inflation

In January, 2001, America had a balanced budget, low debt, and was at peace. Here, briefly, is what lay ahead: war, financial crisis, civil unrest, massive growth of the federal government, and now severe inflation.

Never in the history of America has our government in its ineptitude created such a false economy, risking hundreds of years of hard work on unsound and unworkable economic policies. The Founders wisely relied on dispersion of power. They knew there would be dishonest and incompetent politicians but, in this case, the entire government is infected with deceptive leaders.

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Wall Street Veers Higher on Fed Plan to Buy Corporate Bonds

Stocks swung solidly higher on Wall Street in afternoon trading Monday after the Federal Reserve said it would begin buying individual corporate bonds, the central bank’s latest move to prop up volatile financial markets through the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The S&P 500 was up 1% after being down as much as 2.5% shortly after trading began in New York. The gains followed sharp losses in Asia and more moderate ones in Europe. Worries were on the rise that new waves of coronavirus infections around the world could derail the swift economic recovery that Wall Street had seemed sure just a week ago was on the way.

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Commentary: The U.S. Economy Will Weather the Chinese Coronavirus

American Spirit

President Donald Trump praised the Federal Reserve for cutting the federal funds rate to a range of 0 percent to 0.25 percent, and restarting quantitative easing with $500 billion of U.S. treasuries purchases and $200 billion of mortgage purchases in response to the Chinese coronavirus global pandemic.

“It makes me very happy and I want to congratulate the Federal Reserve,” he said. “That’s a big step and I’m very happy they did it.” Trump has been hounding the Fed for years to cut interest rates to make the dollar more competitive against trading partners’ currencies including the yuan, euro and peso. Now he gets his wish.

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President Trump Praises Fed as Interest Rates Are Slashed to Near Zero

The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to near zero on Sunday as part of a series of measures intended to combat the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The central bank cut rates to 0% to 0.25%, the central bank announced in a statement. The Fed will also purchase $700 billion worth of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities through quantitative easing, a measure previously used during the Great Recession to get money flowing back into the markets, The Washington Post reported.

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The Fed Lifts Rates for Third Time in 2018 and One More Raise Is Expected

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised a key interest rate for the third time this year in response to a strong U.S. economy and signaled that it expected to maintain a pace of gradual rate hikes. The Fed lifted its short-term rate — a benchmark for many consumer and business loans — by a quarter-point to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent. It was the eighth hike since late 2015. The central bank stuck with its previous forecast for a fourth rate increase before year’s end and for three more hikes in 2019. The Fed dropped phrasing it had used for years that characterized its rate policy as “accommodative” by favoring low rates. In dropping that language, the central bank may be signaling its resolve to keep raising rates. Many analysts think the economy could weaken next year, in part from the effects of the trade conflicts President Donald Trump has pursued with China, Canada, Europe and other trading partners. The tariffs and countertariffs that have been imposed on imports and exports are having the effect of raising prices for some goods and supplies and potentially slowing growth. Compounding the effects of the tariffs,other factors could slow growth…

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