Remember the Fed? Those are the people who guide money policy in this country, and that affects things like the interest rates and food prices. Well, there’s some cautiously good news from the Fed recently: interest rates may start going down!
Here are Five Fast Facts on interest rates going down:
- 📝 The Status - In the latest Fed meeting, they said the numbers looked pretty good compared to projections. Most of those projections said there should be three interest rate cuts next year, so it looks like we’re on track to lower rates in the next few months. That’s right, put on your dancin’ shoes, everyone, it’s time to party! (Not really.)
- 👍👎 The Change (Or Not) - That’s a future projection, though. No changes were made right now. It’s tricky because there’s a lag between changes and their results, and there’s also a balance between wages and costs for everything being produced. It’s unfortunately not an exact science.
- 📉 The Numbers - Inflation over the last half of the year was around 2.8%, down from 5.1% in the first half of the year. This is what’s making the experts think the worst is over and it may be time to start cutting rates. You can just see the accounting nerds sharpening their digital knives…
- 📈 Rally, Rally, Rally - The speculation of rate cuts next year has fueled a bit of a rally in the stock market. All the major indexes went up after the news, which certainly is a good thing for our investments and retirement accounts!
- 😞 It’s Built In - It could be great for our Paychecks if rates get cut - it means things will become a bit less expensive! But the price increases resulting from all those months of massive inflation have become built in now. Which really sucks.
🔥Bottom line: The US economy is a tremendously complex thing full of a bazillion moving parts. And honestly, a lot of this stuff is guesswork. No one actually KNOWS what’s going to happen, but it’s a good thing to look at the facts and predict as best we can so we can prepare. The bottom line here is that we’ll support anything that brings costs down and keeps jobs rolling, and it sounds like we might be about to get just that. Maybe.
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