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Hardly 7 months the rate was 0.25%. Now it's 4%. Markets haven't really had time to react to these rapid changes. Housing is only just getting impacted by the higher home mortgage rates. Be ready for more market issues for the next few months.
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There is, of course, the teeny tiny problem of that 31 trillion dollar debt.
Not sure how this plan is supposed to work when the debt is so astronomically insane.
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They’re only pretending to fight inflation. With inflation at 15% and rates at 4%, the debt still inflates away.
They’d have to raise to like 20% to actually get inflation down.
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Yeah, the "worst kept secret in finance" is that the Fed can somehow raise rates very high (over 5% or so) and keep them there for any length of time, given the massive impact that would have on the US government's interest payments. Everyone knows it's a matter of time before the costs are too great and the Fed has to print to keep the Treasury department solvent.
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I've never paid this close attention to FED rates. It's kind of crazy how arbitrary this power is.
Tid bits:
  • this interest rate they are messing with, the federal funds rate, hasn't been this high (3.75-4%) since 2007
  • it seems like they are planning more hikes. Powell:
    It is very premature, in my view, to think about or be talking about pausing our rate hikes. We have a ways to go.
  • the FED says they expect to need to raise this rate to at least 4.6% to get inflation back to 2% next year
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Serious question who says this inflation we are experiencing is caused by low rates? It is possible that they are misdiagnosing the situation and making things worse.
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I'm not sure it matters what the cause is, because many causes of inflation can't be addressed directly or reversed. afaik the thinking goes: Raising interest rates reduces credit in the system -> reduces the amount of money in the system competing for goods -> cools prices. ie it's unlikely this causes inflation to get worse. It definitely wreaks economic havoc though, particularly for sectors/people dependent on cheap credit.
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The cause of Inflation is always manipulation of the money supply. Supply chains etc react to that, but the cause is 100% manipulation of the money supply every time. What the Fed is doing now is killing market demand and creating joblessness to bring down the inflation caused by the government.
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30% of all dollars that exist in the world were created since 2020. So it's hard to see how current price inflation doesn't have a significant tie-in to monetary policy. Is it possible to print $6T dollars in less than three years, and not cause 8%+ price inflation?
Of course getting the toothpaste back in the tube isn't as easy as getting it out. So there's not a linear, direct, timely relationship with raising fed rates and lowering price inflation.
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criminals
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Hopefully the FED will give us a breather before the elections. We might even see a pump in the price of Bitcoin before and after the elections.
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Fed doesn't seem to understand rate of change. They are slamming the economy into a brick wall. US consumer is desperately trying to maintain their standard of living and starting to finance it with high interest credit, especially seen in Q3 with the service sector booming (likely due to 2 years of covid lockdown nonsense, people were not giving up their summer holidays, parties, events due to pesky inflation and rates). Luke Gromen had a good point on Preston's podcast that a lot of normies won't notice the significant drop in net worth until they get their year-end financial statements. He thinks the major consumer spending pullback will occur in Q1 2023. Tend to agree.
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I think they're really all about sucking out capital from equity markets to bond markets, regardless of how much interest payments shoot up, because you can always QE that later. S&P still way overvalued I think they're going to keep pushing to bring it down and smother the wealth effect, I think the pain will be around 2800 -3000,
What I am interested in is how high other markets can push their interest rates to combat capital moving to the US for that risk-free rate, either you raise your interest rates to slow down the bleeding, or you let your currency get creamed .
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I expect tough times ahead for average worker. Things will get much worse before it starts getting better. Stack those sats everyone. We will need them where we are headed.
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The FED overlords have determined that too many people still have jobs and so the wreckage must continue.
Stay humble & Stack sats. Enjoy the discounts.
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more time for stacking sats
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