On Wednesday, as a round-up to the banking group’s quarterly meetings, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) would forgo making any change to the interest rate for the fourth time in a row.
“Today, the FOMC decided to leave our policy interest rate unchanged,” Fed Chair Powell says. “Our strong actions have moved our policy rate well into restrictive territory and we’ve been seeing the effects on economic activity and inflation.” pic.twitter.com/X6d9LF1RVp
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) January 31, 2024
As Spencer Brown, my colleague at sister site Townhall.com, wrote,
As a result, the Fed did not reduce interest rates for the fourth time in a row — which remain at the highest level since early 2001 — as it insists it is working toward getting inflation back to its goal of just two percent. The latest release of the Consumer Price Index showed that annualized core inflation remains nearly double the Fed’s goal at 3.9 percent.
Notably, one phrase that has been included in every FOMC statement since the March 2023 failures of banks including Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank was not included in Wednesday’s release: “The U.S. banking system is sound and resilient.”
As readers likely realize, inflation growth has slowed down–it hasn’t decreased. The interest rate news comes on the same day Issues & Insights/TIPP released its latest poll taking the temperature of American consumers, which finds that a shocking two-thirds of voters polled said they are “living ‘paycheck to paycheck'” under Bidenomics:
While the U.S. remains a wealthy country compared to others, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are “living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ these days” in the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, conducted from Jan. 3-5 from among 1,401 registered voters. The poll has a +/-2.6 percentage point margin of error.
This shocking result comes as some on Wall Street and many politicians applaud recent data showing solid growth in the fourth quarter, along with a slowing rate of inflation.
What’s equally surprising is that the public’s concern is bipartisan, with 63% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans, and 62% of independents saying they’re just scraping by each payday.
Not exactly a note of confidence for the current resident of the White House–even from the president’s own party.
This is a developing story. RedState will bring you further updates as they become available.
