I'm old enough to remember in university economics class, the professor would joke about how financial media would closely watch press conferences that Alan Greenspan would give after FOMC meetings, down to watching the thickness of the briefcase to guess as to whether the fed funds rate (which determines interest rates) would increase or decrease.
I am happy rates have risen, and I hope they stay at a sane level more in line with historical values rather than the insane period of the past 14 years. As another commenter here points out, when rates are not-zero, business defaults back to value-creation, instead of other silly game-the-system metrics that have arisen in this time frame.
Of course it will be painful, both for a generation of younger people who have never experienced "high rates", and also for the finance "professionals" who built reputations on nothing more than gaining access to easy-money and deploying them randomly to things which only rise in value because others also pumped in easy-money down the line. It may also address some of the woke-time-wasting initiatives at companies, as anything not actually adding value will be dropped.
The main thing will be to see if the Fed actually stays the course, or if the allure of the money-printer is too seductive and they decide to drop rates back down again even after (or worse, before) inflation is tamed. If so, then the currency will continue to debase until the crypto exit is inevitable.
Can you point me in the direction of something that explains the mechanics of how the FFR determines (prior to market sentiment) the rest of the yield curve? I know they do, but most explainers stop at that.
How many people under 35 know that Greenspan held an "emergency" Fed meeting in 1994 to RAISE rates 25 bps?
This idea the Fed exists to print money and keep rates low is just not reality. This is over extending the recent past as some kind of stable process.
This is going to be extraordinarily painful. So much of the economy, risk preferences, expectations have over aligned to an unsustainable zero interest rate environment that is gone for a generation. The biggest bubble ever popped last year if you look at Wilshire 5000 vs GDP but most people don't even realize we were in such a massive bubble yet.
We were not talking about the dot com bubble in summer 2000 either though. We were just talking about how do we get back to the bull market. We are still at the denial stage.
I am happy rates have risen, and I hope they stay at a sane level more in line with historical values rather than the insane period of the past 14 years. As another commenter here points out, when rates are not-zero, business defaults back to value-creation, instead of other silly game-the-system metrics that have arisen in this time frame.
Of course it will be painful, both for a generation of younger people who have never experienced "high rates", and also for the finance "professionals" who built reputations on nothing more than gaining access to easy-money and deploying them randomly to things which only rise in value because others also pumped in easy-money down the line. It may also address some of the woke-time-wasting initiatives at companies, as anything not actually adding value will be dropped.
The main thing will be to see if the Fed actually stays the course, or if the allure of the money-printer is too seductive and they decide to drop rates back down again even after (or worse, before) inflation is tamed. If so, then the currency will continue to debase until the crypto exit is inevitable.