interest rates

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Jay Powell continues to show his independence from Donald Trump.

Central Bank, est. 1913, seeks new Chair, to assume duties Feb. 5, 2018: Applicants will be considered even if they have graduate training in economics, although a doctorate might prove a deterrent to selection. Patience to sit through long staff meetings discussing arcane forecasting issues…

It was a bad week for the president of the United States and might prove to have been a career-ending week for the chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is investigating whether Trump obstructed justice in connection with the FBI probe into Russian activities…

The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate for the second time in three months on Wednesday, a signal that the principals of the banking system view the economy's health as stable.

The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate for only the second time since 2008 Wednesday, and left its economic projections mostly unchanged despite granting the uncertainty of how Donald Trump's economic policies could alter the economy and its future decision-making.

They should have known better, those central bankers and policy-watchers who thought that Janet Yellen's speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday would mark a volte-face. Yellen, who skipped last year's meeting, came to Jackson Hole under pressure from important colleagues to commit to raising…

Janet Yellen has given her speech and her words, as parsed by CNN/Money, indicate that, "a rate hike this year is still on the table."

"I must do it. But I fear to do it. Upon my soul I do." So said Alec Guinness' King Faisal to Peter O'Toole's Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia when faced with demands that he place his Bedouin fighters under British command. And so in effect said Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen to the…

"I'll build a stairway to Paradise," promised songwriter George Gershwin decades ago. Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen is about to try to do the same, taking interest rates up that stairway, from the zero level set during the hellish days of the financial crisis to the Paradise of normality or…

Coming soon to a central bank near you, in time for the Christmas shopping season, an increase in interest rates, courtesy of Janet Yellen and her colleagues on the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy committee. Or perhaps not. Folks living in euroland can expect the gift that keeps on giving,…

The U.S. economy is chugging along. Not at high speed, but at a steady 2.25 percent annual rate, with retailers stocking up in anticipation of a very merry holiday season. The unemployment rate is down to 5.1 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Board headed lower to its “long-run normal”…

There are two explanations, one political, one economic, for the Fed's decision to leave interest rates alone. The first of course, is that Fed chair Janet Yellen is a political animal, and the forces on her side have been agitating loudly to leave rates alone. History has shown that the Fed finds…

“A fact can be a beautiful thing,” sings one of the characters in the award-winning musical, “Promises, Promises.” True. Unfortunately, a gaggle of facts can be somewhere between confusing and a curse, especially if you are a central banker who has specialized in promises, promises that a process…

In one of the newly release Hillary Clinton emails, a mostly redacted message from Philip Gordon to Huma Abedin and Jacob Sullivan ends with, "To quote Huma, I don't get paid enough." Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide, was able to change her fortunes with a little help from friends.

Hurry up and wait. Hurry to the announcement by the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy committee, and then wait for the next one. After 2,417 days of keeping its key interest rate at zero, on Wednesday of last week the Fed policy team decided that a few more weeks or months at that level might…

“Fed Puts Interest-Rate Hikes in Play,” led the Wall Street Journal’s page one, following Federal Reserve Board chair Janet Yellen’s latest press conference. “Don’t bet on June for Federal Reserve hike,” countered page one of the business section of USA Today. To which I would add a headline for…

On April 5, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt did it right here in the White House. On August 15, 1971 Richard Nixon came back from Camp David and did it. On September 22, 1985, Ronald Reagan went to the Plaza Hotel and did it.

It’s us against them—an American economy on the upswing vs. a global economy that definitely is not. Last year the U.S. economy added almost 3 million jobs, the largest number in fifteen years. The headline unemployment rate is down to 5.6 percent, and the so-called U-6 unemployment rate, which…

All good things must come to an end. And bad things, too, if you believe that the Federal Reserve Board’s bond buying program was a mistake. The minutes of its June 17-18 monetary policy committee meeting, published a few days ago, reveal that these purchases, largely credited with keeping…

Hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein is not a man to be fazed by the recent rise in mortgage interest rates. Nor is he one to worry that the housing market might be softening, loping the odd million off the $147 million he shelled out for an 18-acre beachfront home in the Hamptons, on New York’s…

The economy grew in the first quarter at “point one percent,” announced Mitch McConnell, and then repeated it by way of introduction to an attack on President Obama’s economic policies. Whether seeming to revel in the misery of a slow recovery that has kept unemployment high and wages low simply…

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee has put together this chart showing that payments on the interest of federal debt will "dwarf virtually every federal expense" in 2024:

Until recently it has been fashionable to denigrate the U.S. economic recovery: “America is the best house in a bad neighborhood,” sniffed many analysts. No longer. America is now a very good house in a terrible neighborhood.

The bad news is that there is good news. At least, that’s how many skittish investors in shares and bonds see the increasingly cheery view of the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus who concluded last week that downside risk to the economy has diminished since the Fall, and guessed that…

At the conclusion of a lunch at the British embassy here in Washington, Britain’s ambassador, Sir Peter Westmacott, asked each of the four scribbler-economists he had invited to give his forecasts for the year. I usually decline to participate in this sport, but after hearing the unoptimistic views…

The fiscal cliff is a diversion, designed by politicians to conceal their inability to come to grips with the fact that they continue to spend too much, and refuse to reform a tax structure that reduces the competitiveness of American companies in world markets. No matter what deal is cut, whether…

In a decade, federal spending to pay for the interest on America's debt will exceed total spending on the defense budget by $125 billion, or 20 percent, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Budget Management. The projections are based on President Barack…

The latest chart from the Senate Republican Budget Committee, pointing out that under President Obama's budget, the U.S. government will be spending more in 2019 to pay the interest on the national debt than it will be to defend America:

CBS New York: "OWS Protesters Chant ‘Follow Those Kids!’ As Small Children Try To Go To School On Wall Street"

There’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Just a thin ray, and at the end of a very long tunnel littered with government and private debt.