Articles by tag: Federal Reserve

Inflation in the U.S. reached its highest rate in four decades at 6.6 percent in 2022, and as prices rose, consumers were naturally expected to shift gears and slow down on spending. A record-setting holiday season for retail sales assuaged some of those concerns. Couple that with the most recent CPI report, which had some…

(Bloomberg) — The US economy beat expectations in the last quarter of 2022, posting the kind of mild slowdown that the Federal Reserve wants to see as it attempts to tame inflation without choking off growth. Economists who dug into the details, though, saw enough warning signs – especially in weakening demand among American consumers…

With the S&P 500 down at about 20% and the Nasdaq down at almost 30%, a lot of questions have been flying around about what’s causing the declines and volatility in the stock market. Many have said the market is just trying to balance itself after the spike during the COVID-19 period, while others…

Deflation is finally in the air. Firms like Goldman Sachs are expecting a drastic decline in U.S. inflation in 2023, estimating personal consumption expenditure (PCE) figures as low as 2.9% by December 2023, compared to the current measure of 5.1%. This comes in the wake of the CPI growing at slower rate than anticipated, clocking…

After weeks dotted with interest rate hikes, mortgage rate oscillation, and dropping energy prices, U.S. businesses and consumers finally got a fresh look at the nation’s inflationary climate and whether or not monetary policy is having its intended effects. On August 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the most recent consumer price index for…

Another day, another interest rate hike. The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday afternoon that it’d be raising the federal funds rate by 0.75%. Previously at 1.58%, this now puts the federal funds rate at a range of 2.25% to 2.5%. This is now the third interest rate increase in 2022, rising sharply from 0.25% in March…

For the third week in a row, initial jobless claims declined as the United States’ labor market continues to recover from the 2020 recession. On August 12, the Labor Department said that new claims for jobless benefits came down to 375,000 last week. CNBC reports that there were also a record high number of open…

Data out of Washington, D.C. this week shows positive signs for American factory production. The November numbers show a seasonally-adjusted increase of 1.1% in November. That’s good enough for the biggest month-over-month increase since October, 2017. The data is a measure of factory, mining and utility output. It was not long ago we discussed…

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter-percentage point on Wednesday, its first reduction in 11 years. However, this is no indictment on the state of the U.S. economy. Here’s how Whittier Trust CIO Sandip Bhagat broke down the news in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central…