“What I would want to do is have a policy – I wouldn’t go by what Pocahontas wants you to do, because her agenda is obvious, and she’s a disaster and she’s one of the least effective senators in the United States Senate, and nobody understands that, but she’s done nothing”, Trump said. He said the long period of low rates had most hurt retirement investors who had expected to draw on savings interest. “Watch what is going to happen afterwards”.
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Trump’s remarks follow an interview with Reuters last week in which he blamed the Fed for creating a “false economy” and an “artificial stock market”. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, he explained, was enacting the policy of “quantitative easing” – injecting large amounts of money into the economy – in an attempt to keep interest rates low and give Barack Obama a boost.
“She’s obviously political and doing what Obama wants her to do, and I know that’s not supposed to be the way it is”, Trump said. “The interest rates are kept down by President Obama, I have no doubt that that’s the reason that they are being kept down”. “She’s obviously political”, he said.
“There are a lot of arguments you can have about the Fed’s monetary policy – legitimate, serious debates”, said Tony Fratto, a partner at Hamilton Place Strategies and a former spokesman for President George W. Bush. “Words have consequences. Words move markets”. But it’s hard to reconcile Trump’s comments from springtime, where he warned of awful economic consequences from an interest rate hike, with his comments today.
On Monday, Donald Trump said that Janet Yellen is keeping interest rates low so that the stock market won’t crash – and that she should be “ashamed of herself” for doing so.
“I sit in the deliberations. Politics simply does not come up”, Kashkari said Monday. “We look at the economic data and. everyone around the table is committed to achieving our dual mandate” of maximum employment and stable prices, Mr Kashkari said.
“Right now I am for low interest rates, and I think we keep them low”, he told CNBC. The mogul went on to tell the paper that high rates make American exports less competitive, while also increasing our country’s borrowing costs.
He said the current Fed seems to be of the view that markets need to be spoon fed.
“Well, I used to think that the Justice Department worked independently, also, and I used to think that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was independent, also, but that’s obviously not possible because Hillary Clinton is guilty as hell, and everybody knows it”, he said.
“Her agenda is obvious”, Mr. Trump said.
“So I used to think they were independent”. And the Fed is obviously not independent. After all, the way low interest rates are allegedly helping Obama is by improving economic conditions. Because he remembers where interest rates have been, it’s easier for him to believe that they’ll definitely be headed that way again someday.
But in May, Trump said rates needed to stay low to keep the value of the dollar from getting too high and hurting USA exports.
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“We need to get growth back up”. It’s all pretty great populist red meat, and doubly-hilarious considering Trump’s backgrounds in monetary policy (nonexistent) and personal debt (extensive).
