{"id":378968,"date":"2018-09-28T21:35:04","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T20:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/after-a-decade-of-falling-pay-us-federal-reserve-acts-to-stop-wage-inflation\/"},"modified":"2018-09-28T21:35:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T20:35:04","slug":"after-a-decade-of-falling-pay-us-federal-reserve-acts-to-stop-wage-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/after-a-decade-of-falling-pay-us-federal-reserve-acts-to-stop-wage-inflation\/","title":{"rendered":"After a decade of falling pay, US Federal Reserve acts to stop \u201cwage inflation\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>After a decade of falling pay, US Federal Reserve acts to stop \u201cwage inflation\u201d<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    28 September 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>The US Federal Reserve lifted its base interest rate on Wednesday, raising it above two percent for the first time since the US central bank began its low-interest-rate regime after the global financial crash of 2008. Explaining the rate hike, the Fed\u2019s Open Market Committee said it was closely monitoring and would quickly react to \u201cindicators of inflation pressures and expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The talk about inflationary pressures is a code word in ruling circles for the fear of rising wages. As <em>Financial Times<\/em> commentator John Authers noted in a recent article, \u201c[W]age inflation is central to the Fed\u2019s reaction function.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The stupendous run-up on the global stock exchanges and vast increase in the personal fortunes of the financial oligarchy have depended on the relentless downward pressure on workers\u2019 wages and conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Mass unemployment, home foreclosures and the spread of poverty during the Great Recession were used as a hammer to restructure class relations in the United States and around the world and destroy social rights and protections won by workers over generations of class struggle. While governments of every stripe handed out trillions in \u201ceconomic stimulus\u201d packages to the financial speculators and corporations responsible for the crash, the watchwords for the working class were austerity, \u201clabor flexibility\u201d and the poverty-level wages and precarious employment associated with the so-called Gig Economy.<\/p>\n<p>The Obama administration\u2019s restructuring of the auto industry, carried out with the full support of the United Auto Workers union, slashed the wages of new hires in half, abolished the eight-hour day and vastly expanded the use of temporary&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/09\/28\/pers-s28.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 After a decade of falling pay, US Federal Reserve acts to stop \u201cwage inflation\u201d 28 September 2018 The US Federal Reserve lifted its base interest rate on Wednesday, raising it above two percent for the first time since the US central bank began its low-interest-rate regime after the global financial crash of 2008. Explaining [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-378968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}