Cathie Wood says don’t do it.
Raise interest rates, that is. The founder of Ark Investment Management and guru to retail traders of Tech stocks says the Federal Reserve is playing with fire.
Why? Because growth is fragile and consumer confidence is woeful. Hike rates, and we plunge into recession.
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I enjoy economics almost as much as market structure. I’ve got observations.
What’s the big threat Ms. Woods sees in higher rates? US Gross Domestic Product is 70% consumption – the stuff we buy. The consumption linchpin is home equity.
As homes increase in value, consumers borrow equity to fuel both the confidence to go out and buy stuff, and the means to consume big-ticket items like cars and appliances.
If interest rates rise, people stop buying and refinancing homes, and the torrent of cash driving consumption shrivels.
I think the Federal Reserve knows it’s going to muzzle the economy. But The Fed will try to rapidly raise interest rates so it can hack them back to zero as the economy slips. Maybe that’ll juice consumption anew, forestalling recession.
The whole concept is jacked. The Fed shouldn’t be manipulating consumer behavior at all, because then it’s artificial.
The Fed touts its dual mandate – stable prices, low unemployment – as an unassailable hieratic purpose. Well, why should the Fed allocate labor and capital? You’d expect that from a despotic politburo, not a free country.
Yet nobody questions it.
Listen to a Fed press conference and all you’ll hear is how many times will you hike rates? Do you support 25 or 50 basis points? Is the Fed too late in the curve? Will higher rates choke off growth? Will higher rates bring inflation to heel?
In my entire adult life, not one economist at a Fed presser has asked a good question.
So here’s one. Why set rates so low in the first place that they discourage savings and promote borrowing and spending? Isn’t that the opposite of sound financial strategy?
Or how about this? The US Constitution directs Congress to fix exchange rates for our currency and to back it with just weights and measures, which means with gold and silver. Why does the Fed defy the Constitution?
Because, Tim, gold and silver are stupid antiquated notions about money.
Well, it’s the law in black and white, hasn’t been changed. But government has decided its opinions are superior to the law. In many instances. But I digress.
John Maynard Keynes, the father of deficit spending, said, “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
You can’t suck all the value out of money backed by metal.
How does inflation debauch capitalism? Businesses struggle to deploy labor and capital to produce goods and services at predictable returns. Consumers who trade time for money can’t make ends meet and become state dependents.
Yes, hourly workers are hurt most. Then the government has the audacity to blame capitalism for the growing wealth gap. No, the Fed does it. Rich people can surf the inflation wave. Poor people can’t.
The problem isn’t higher rates. It’s LOW RATES to begin.
Low rates increase the supply of currency faster than output, which means everybody’s money buys less. The money supply the last two years rose from $16-$22 trillion.
The definition of inflation should be “low interest rates,” because the inevitable consequence is more money chasing the same goods instead of getting saved, invested.
If we wanted people to save, we’d reward them for it. Why don’t we? Because the Fed exists – no matter its pronouncements of independence – to keep the federal government and its policies afloat. Which requires CONSUMPTION. Not saving.
Even if it’s contrary to the interests of the citizenry.
What if we lifted rates to 10% and left them there? A bunch of stuff would go broke. Probably our government.
Too high a price? If we want money that buys more over time rather than less, that generates a return when you save it so we become less indebted, less dependent, we have to either bankrupt the government or take away its printing press.
Maybe both.
We will never be financially responsible as a society so long as the Federal Reserve uses interest rates to allocate labor and capital, and the government is printing money.
That is the problem to solve. Everything else is a failure to address the problem.
So, will we? I’d wager all that Fed paper blighting the fruited plain that it’ll continue until nobody wants dollars (we’re helping Russia, in fact).
Or we could instead fix it. Anyone?
