Pelican Parts Forums - Tabby was right some things..

He was very economically astute. Red this, which backs up much of what he's been posting for years...
Also, I don't see this as a Dem-Republican thing...the fed has scrwed up w3hile one or the other was in charge.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-talk-dot-plots-theres-big-difference-between-saying-and-doing

One part I found important, but the entire piece worth a read:

This is just one example of how horribly wrong the Fed has been. I can cite other examples.

Remember back in 2006 when the central bankers insisted there was no housing bubble? Then when things started to unravel, they promised the problem was contained to subprime.

In 2008, Ben Bernanke launched quantitative easing and swore that it wasn’t debt monetization. He said the Fed would sell all of the bonds it planned to buy once the emergency was over. Today, virtually all of those bonds remain on the Fed’s balance sheet.

It’s almost like the Fed people are wrong about everything.

So, why should we put any stock at all in the most recent dot-plot or the Fed’s economic projections?

The problem is the central bankers are disconnected from reality. This also seems typical. Remember “transitory” inflation?

The point here is there is no reason to believe anything Powell and Company said today or to think their musings will aid in projecting the central bank’s next moves. Given the Fed’s track record, it’s more likely that rates will be at zero by the end of next year and the US economy will be in the clutches of a deep recession.

The fact is the Fed can afford to be hawkish as long as the economy is limping along with no obvious hiccups. The real test will come when something breaks in the economy.

And something will break with interest rates at 5.5%. It’s just a matter of time.

As the saying goes, things happen slowly and then all at once.

Interest rates are higher than they were in June 2006, the peak of that hiking cycle that burst the housing bubble. The Fed held them there until Bernanke cut rates in September 2007 when home sales started to collapse. In other words, rates are currently at levels that set off the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. The difference is today we have even more debt and malinvestments in the economy. One has to wonder why anybody thinks things will turn out differently this time.

Consider this; the last time rates were this high, the national debt was a mere $5.6 trillion. Today the debt stands at over $33 trillion and the federal government is running huge deficits month after month.

Meanwhile, there were more corporate defaults through the first six months of 2023 than we had in all of ’22, and “healthy” American consumers have blown through their savings and have turned to using credit cards with 20 percent-plus interest rates to make ends meet.

The fact is the Federal Reserve has screwed up everything that is a function of interest rates. Rate hikes have already precipitated a financial crisis. Despite the Fed’s insistence that “the US banking system is sound and resilient,” we’ve already witnessed three major bank failures. The Fed’s bank bailout papered over those problems and plugged that hole in the dam (Banks are still getting bailout money.), but it’s only a matter of time before something else breaks. (Commercial real estate is a good candidate.)

Cuts are coming, no matter how tough Powell talks today, or what the rest of his crew put on a dot plot. It doesn’t matter what they say. It’s all about what they do.