Fed Fakes Confidence With Another Dec. Quarter Point Rate Hike

* On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve did exactly what they did last year
* They waited until the last possible meeting to nudge the Federal Funds rate by 1/4 of 1%
* So now, after 2 years of tightening, the lower bound of the Fed's range has gone from zero to 1/2 of 1%
* Now Janet Yellen said the Fed made this decision to lift rates because of its confidence in the U.S economy
* That is complete nonsense
* If the Fed were confident in the U.S economy, rates would be much higher than a half of a percent
* The Fed would have raised rates a long time ago and by much more than this
* In fact, they could have lifted rates by more than 25 basis points on Wednesday
* Yet, they had so little confidence in the economy that this is what they did
* In fact, I believe that the only reason the Fed raised rates this December
* Is the same reason they did so last December: they did it despite having no confidence in the economy
* But they didn't want to send a message that they were that worried, so they raised interest rates by the smallest possible amount
* And they also did it to try to preserve their credibility when it comes to talking about future interest rates
* Think about one half of one percent
* When Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates in the aftermath of the September 11 disaster and the bursting of the dot com bubble
* When the stock market was plunging and the economy was in recession, he was so worried about the economy that he lowered rates down to 1%
* Now Yellen is so confident in the economy, the highest she's willing to raise them is 1/2 of 1%?
* This is half of where they were lowered in panic by Greenspan?
* So the fact that rates are only 1/2%, what does that tell you about the true confidence that Janet Yellen and the rest of the Federal Reserve have in the U.S. Economy?
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