from Hacker News

Fed increases target rate to 3.75-4.00%

by lpage on 11/2/22, 6:00 PM with 173 comments

• by r00fus on 11/2/22, 6:47 PM

  This will do nothing for actually impacting inflation. Instead it will crash the economy. Real inflation seems to be due to price gouging by companies[0], combined with energy increases due to OPEC price fixing [1], and rent increases due to collusion [2] and corporate domination housing market [3].

  Jerome Powell had no answers to the Senate Oversight committee when asked how increasing rates would actually reduce that kind of inflation because his goal is to crash the economy for his buddies on Wall Street - they have lobbyists at the Fed too. [4]

  [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflat...

  [1] https://newrepublic.com/article/166752/opec-cartel-gas-price...

  [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

  [3] https://wjno.iheart.com/featured/brian-mudd/content/2022-02-....

  [4] https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/federal-reserve-bank-lob...

• by dragontamer on 11/2/22, 6:07 PM

  Not much to say here since this was foretold / expected.

  All eyes on the 2:30pm press conference, where people will hope to divine the future from Powell's statements. I'm going to bet ~40 minutes of "Inflation isn't at 2% yet and we're committed to reducing inflation to that level".

  I think what people really want to know is, where do these rate-increases end? In Sept. 22nd meeting, Powell thought 4.5% was roughly where things would end. Is the target rate higher now? Inflation is still strong, job numbers are also strong. Are we looking at additional hikes to 5% as we enter May 2023 or so??

• by seydor on 11/2/22, 6:49 PM

  Money for your parents but not for you.

  Replace the Fed with an AI. They have a well defined objective function

• by agildehaus on 11/2/22, 6:43 PM

  I just started to have enough money for a decent downpayment on a house when all this rate hike started. Now I'm basically priced out.

• by incomingpain on 11/2/22, 6:26 PM

  Not a huge increase. Inflation is under control in the sense it's not rising, but they need to still pull a ton of money out of the economy; or let it ride.

  Powell's speech doesn't matter at all until we see the results of midterms.

• by Raydovsky on 11/2/22, 6:41 PM

  I dont get it. Prices are rising because fossil fuels are more expensive.

  How do interest rate hikes fix that?

• by nurettin on 11/2/22, 6:40 PM

  You should see the insane jumps in spdr futures right now.

• by apropos_g on 11/2/22, 6:37 PM

  "I am once again asking for" a common sense explanation for how increasing interest rates will reduce the prices of retail food and gas.

  (This should be the new Deleuze meme.)