{"id":358241,"date":"2018-04-24T23:45:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-interest-rates-are-rising\/"},"modified":"2018-04-24T23:45:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T22:45:00","slug":"why-interest-rates-are-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-interest-rates-are-rising\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Interest Rates Are Rising"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Fed is aggressively raising interest rates, although inflation is contained, private debt is already at 150% of GDP, and rising variable rates could push borrowers into insolvency. So what is driving the Fed’s push to “tighten”?<\/p>\n

On March 31st\u00a0the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for the sixth time in 3 years and signaled its intention to raise rates twice more in 2018, aiming for a fed funds target of 3.5% by 2020. LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate) has risen even faster than the fed funds rate, up to 2.3% from just 0.3% 2-1\/2 years ago. LIBOR is set in London by private agreement of the biggest banks, and the interest on $3.5 trillion globally is linked to it,\u00a0including $1.2 trillion in consumer mortgages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alarmed commentators warn that global debt levels have reached\u00a0$233 trillion, more than three times<\/a>\u00a0global GDP; and that much of that debt is at variable rates pegged either to the Fed’s interbank lending rate or to LIBOR. Raising rates further could push governments, businesses and homeowners over the edge.\u00a0In its Global Financial Stability report<\/a>\u00a0in April 2017, the International Monetary Fund warned that projected interest rises could throw 22% of US corporations into default.<\/p>\n

Then there is the US federal debt, which has more than doubled since the 2008 financial crisis, shooting up from $9.4 trillion in mid-2008 to over $21 trillion in April 2018. Adding to that debt burden, the Fed has announced that it will be dumping its government bonds acquired through quantitative easing at the rate of $600 billion annually. It will sell $2.7 trillion in federal securities at the rate of $50 billion monthly beginning in October. Along with a government\u00a0budget deficit of $1.2 trillion<\/a>, that’s nearly $2 trillion in new government debt that will need financing annually.<\/p>\n

If the Fed follows through with its plans, projections are that by 2027,\u00a0US taxpayers will owe $1 trillion<\/a>\u00a0annually\u00a0just in interest on the federal debt. That is enough to fund…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Fed is aggressively raising interest rates, although inflation is contained, private debt is already at 150% of GDP, and rising variable rates could push borrowers into insolvency. So what is driving the Fed’s push to “tighten”? On March 31st\u00a0the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for the sixth time in 3 years and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-358241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}