Why are interest rates rising while Federal Reserve is cutting?
An odd thing was happening in the run-up to Tuesday’s election that few apart from compulsive market watchers were noticing but now looms large in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s election to a second term.
Over the past 60 days or so, interest rates consumers pay for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards have risen substantially even as the
As of Thursday the average rate on a 30-year, fixed rate mortgage was 6.79%, up from 6.08% as of
What explains this disparity between the Fed’s actions and the rates actual consumers pay? The market. In that time frame, bond investors have relentlessly bid up yields on 10-and 30-year
And what does the market’s behavior tell us? Fed Chairman
It’s the Fed chairman’s job to be ultra-cautious in his musings, but we suspect these recent market moves indeed are noteworthy. We worry they say that federal fiscal policy is out of whack and — given the election results — likely to get even more so. In the fiscal year that ended
As we’ve written before, the nation’s reliance on deficit spending is unsustainable and headed for an unpleasant moment of reckoning. Without a change in course, there will come a time when investors’ faith in the nation’s ability or willingness to honor its debts erodes to the point that federal borrowing becomes inordinately expensive or the government struggles to find buyers for its IOUs at any price.
Hard to imagine? Of course. People warning of profligate spending have long been called, and sometimes mocked as, "deficit scolds." But the most obvious explanation to us of the divergence between the Fed and the markets is sapped confidence in the nation’s fiscal direction.
This is where the election results come in. Trump’s economic agenda — focused on tariffs and eliminating taxes on overtime pay, tips,
His kind of a budget easily could send interest rates even higher, making it that much harder for ordinary Americans to buy a home or even a car, one of the chief complaints of those who "voted with their pocketbooks" when they backed Trump.
Making matters worse for those pocketbook voters, Trump’s tariffs, if imposed as broadly as he proposed during the campaign, will raise consumer prices, potentially restarting the inflationary machine that made voters so grumpy when they considered their electoral choices.
None of this is to say that the Biden administration has performed admirably when it comes to fiscal policy. The trillions in federal spending launched early in his term, only some of which was necessary to soften the pandemic blow, contributed to the inflation that crippled the
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Now that Trump has won office, there are signs the financiers who have his ear realize their conundrum. There’s talk now of keeping the tax-cut promises Trump doled out like
Good luck trying to limit Trump’s signature "no taxes on tips" promise in that fashion. If tipped income is shielded from taxes, the policy will be a nightmare to implement and enforce even without such income limits, given the manifold possibilities for manipulation.
At the end of the day, with the
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