Well, the FED Funds Rate is .25 % right now. Raising it to .5 % is not going to impact the economy. And if the economy slips in the future you still have that .25% to play with. If any business suffers because rates are raised from .25 to .5% or even 1%....it won't be interest rates that cause their failure.
Raising rates 25 basis points while rest of the World has negative rates 1) will strengthen the $ and weaken the currencies of highly indebted emerging nations who buy airplanes, armaments, heavy machinery, Apple phones, seeds and such from us and may create unintended consequences 2) this FED is appointed by Democratic administration and raising the rates in September may help Trump's election bid. It makes no difference in my life but will hurt millions of low income Americans.
Raising rates, guarantees further future raises. At some point interest rates will turn up and equities will turn down. This is the way of the burn and rebuild ideology.
Not before a large swath of people get smoked in the process and the Fed knows this - which is exactly why you aren't seeing any rate increases. This is a game of biding time and nothing more.
John Arnold @JohnArnoldFndtn 4h4 hours ago Bank CEO thinks int rates should rise while hedge fund manager who owns bunch of stocks thinks not. That's helpful. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rees-with-dimon-that-it-s-time-to-raise-rates
Rate hikes while trillions of dollars sits on the books of the central banks......hahahaha ...yea OK.....can't even afford to pay back the interest in those trillions that's why rates aren't going anywhere and when the next recession comes expect rates to go NEGATIVE because the fed didn't act as they were supposed to by raising them when they were supposed to....
Ha ha ha! I wonder what the AMA position on raising medicare reimbursement rates is. Only in the face of a crisis would we expect any kind of significant Fed action just prior to an election. The Fed will always go out of its way to avoid the appearance of any sort of political bias, or doing anything that the know-nothing pundits might claim is politically motivated. But the Fed will never win this game, because doing nothing will invariable be trumpeted by the pundits as a politically motivated non-move. The best they can do, as always, is stay low in their bunker until the smoke clears. Even Greenspan, a political appointee of the worst possible kind -- under qualified, and a stalwart of the Nixon election campaign -- made an effort to out gibberish even himself during political seasons. If you have not a clue what someone is saying, how can you possibly interpret it as favoring one side or the other! For confirmation of the hopeless position the Fed finds themselves in during presidential election campaigns, see the tag line, "Trump Calling out Yellen ...," this same Forum.