(by Michael Snyder | The Economic Collapse Blog) – They know exactly what they are doing. The “experts” running the Federal Reserve know that if they raise interest rates dramatically it will cause countless American workers to lose their jobs and absolutely crush the housing market. And while both of those things are already starting to happen, they just announced another massive rate hike. If there was a school for central bankers, one of the first things they would teach you is that you should never, ever raise rates when an economy is going into recession. Every Fed official knows what has happened in the past when rates have been raised at the start of an economic slowdown, but they are doing it anyway. To call it “economic malpractice” would be a major understatement, and the American people should be deeply alarmed by what it is doing to us.
After all that has already happened, it is hard to believe that Fed officials can continue to be so reckless. On Wednesday, it was announced that rates would rise another 75 basis points…
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points for a third straight month as it struggles to control scorching inflation, a move that threatens to slow US economic growth and exacerbate financial pain for millions of homes and businesses. .
The hikes of three-quarters of a percentage point in June, July and September, the most aggressive series of hikes since 1994, underscore how serious Fed officials are about addressing the inflation crisis after a series of ‘alarming economic reports. Policymakers voted unanimously to approve the latest major hike.
It was a unanimous vote.
There was not a single dissenting voice.
Have they gone completely insane?
Wall Street certainly did not like this decision. The Dow fell hundreds of points immediately after it was announced…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 522.45 points, or 1.7%, to close at 30,183.78. The S&P 500 fell 1.71% to 3,789.93, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.79% to 11,220.19.
The S&P closed Wednesday’s session down more than 10% in the past month and 21% off its 52-week high. Even before the rate decision, stocks were trading on an aggressive Fed tightening campaign that could tip the economy into recession.
For years the Fed coddled the financial markets, but now it’s almost as if they don’t care anymore.
Personally, I am much more concerned about what will happen to hard-working Americans in the coming months. Even Jerome Powell admits that “a spike in unemployment” is likely because of what the Fed is doing…
“I think there is a very high probability that we will have a period of … much lower growth and that could lead to an increase in unemployment,” he said.
Will this mean a recession?
“No one knows whether this process will lead to a recession or how big a recession it will be,” Powell said. “I don’t know the odds.”
In fact, we are in a recession right now.
And Powell and his minions made things much worse.
Even the Democrats get it. After the rate hike was announced, Senator Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter to warn that “millions of Americans” could soon lose their jobs…
.@federalreserve Chairman Powell just announced another extreme hike in interest rates while forecasting rising unemployment. I have been warning that President Powell’s Fed would put millions of Americans out of work, and I fear that it is well on its way to doing so.
This is one of the few times Elizabeth Warren is on point.
As I have been documenting on my website for weeks, large numbers of Americans have already been laid off.
In fact, things are already so bad that even Facebook is reducing its numbers…
As growth stalls and competition intensifies, Facebook parent Meta has quietly begun downsizing by reorganizing departments, while giving “reorganized” employees a narrow window to apply for other positions within the company, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing familiar current and former executives. with the subject
By shuffling people, the company achieves staff cuts “while preventing the mass issuance of pink slips.”
So why would the Fed choose to raise rates when layoffs are already starting to mount?
Higher rates also have a devastating impact on the housing market.
This week we learned that existing home sales have now fallen for seven consecutive months…
Home sales fell for a seventh straight month in August as higher mortgage rates and stubbornly high prices pushed potential buyers out of the market.
Sales of existing homes, which include single-family homes, townhomes, condos and co-ops, fell 19.9% from a year ago and 0.4% from July, according to a report from the National Association of Real Estate Agents.
Someone should start putting “Jerome Powell did this” stickers on for sale signs across the country.
Because this wasn’t supposed to happen.
Now the housing market is already in a “deep recession,” and the Fed keeps making things worse…
The prolonged drop in confidence shows that the property market has been “down all this year”, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson.
“Activity tracks mortgage applications with a lag, and early September figures are underwhelming, even before the uptick in mortgage rates in recent weeks takes effect,” Shepherdson said in a note to clients on Monday.
“In short, the housing market is in a deep recession, which is already hitting homebuilders and will soon depress housing-related retail sales,” he added.
The Fed seems determined to kill the economy.
But why?
Why would they do this?
An analyst just quoted by Fox Business warns that “times are only going to get tougher from here”…
“With the new rate projections, the Fed is engineering a hard landing; a soft landing is almost out of the question,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Global Investors. “Powell’s admission that there will be below-trend growth for a period should be translated as the central bank talking about ‘recession’. Times will get tougher from here.”
Yes, times will definitely get tougher from here.
Indeed, we are finally headed for a meltdown of epic proportions.
But instead of working to prevent a historic crisis, the Federal Reserve is encouraging one.
The American people deserve some answers, because there is something about all of this that stinks.
