Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell plans to address sky-high inflation by hiking interest rates — acknowledging that doing so will suppress wages and worker power. It's a response that will force workers to bear the brunt of the inflation crisis.
The rise in inflation has not been driven by anything that looks like an overheating labor market—instead it has been driven by higher corporate profit margins and supply-chain bottlenecks.
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Why are banks no longer lending to each other? Are they afraid that collapse is imminent somewhere in the system, as with the Lehman collapse in 2008?
Thoughts that huge tax cuts to high-income households will offset a downturn in automobile sales, cuts in public spending, rising college tuition or a dismantling of the health sector are irrational. If theFed raises interests rates, it will threaten a more fragile economy than appears at the moment. The drive to be “normal” in a world that is clearly not normal, may put us in danger of a downturn that will be difficult to recover from.
If most homeowners have not hedged themselves against the possibility that home prices, like bond prices, may fall if interest rates rise, we may be in for another round of very bad news if interest rates ever return to more normal levels. It is remarkable that the latest run-up in house prices has received so little attention from people in policy positions. There may be an enormous price to pay for the continued lack of attention to housing bubbles.
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