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dtwest | 4 years ago

They were going up a couple of years ago.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

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zzleeper|4 years ago

What happened in 2019?

nostrademons|4 years ago

Corporate debt. Fed raised rates and then when it came time to roll over their debt, a lot of major corporations said "Uh, if interest rates keep going up, we are going to go bankrupt because of the higher costs of debt service." The markets had a taper tantrum (the S&P 500 dropped by about 18% in the second half of 2018), and then the Fed reconsidered and started dropping rates again.

Situation is worse now, because it's highly likely that the U.S. Government would go bankrupt if they had to roll over their debt at higher rates, given that the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio skyrocketed from 105% in 2020 to 130% now.

r00fus|4 years ago

Politics. Rates had to go down for the re-election effort.