Trump Demands Fed Slash Rates By 1% As FOMC Meeting Begins
Just in case he hadn’t already made his position re: interest rates clear to the FOMC, President Trump apparently wanted to make sure policy makers knew their place shortly after the beginning of their two-day policy meeting on Tuesday.
After calling for QE4 earlier this month, Trump is now calling on the central bank to slash interest rates by a full percentage point, which would bring the Fed funds target rate back to 1.25%-1.5%, a level it hasn’t seen in more than a year.
Trump also praised Beijing’s latest massive credit injection (which apparently wasn’t enough to stave, and despite surprisingly strong Q1 GDP growth, “with our wonderfully low inflation, we could be setting major records and at the same time make our national debt start to look small.”
Of course, during its last meeting, Jerome Powell made clear that the central bank would ‘pause’ its rate-hike plans for at least the duration of this year.
China is adding great stimulus to its economy while at the same time keeping interest rates low. Our Federal Reserve has incessantly lifted interest rates, even though inflation is very low, and instituted a very big dose of quantitative tightening. We have the potential to go…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2019
….up like a rocket if we did some lowering of rates, like one point, and some quantitative easing. Yes, we are doing very well at 3.2% GDP, but with our wonderfully low inflation, we could be setting major records &, at the same time, make our National Debt start to look small!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2019
The takeaway: America’s central bankers should try and be more like the PBOC.
Original source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/B9Is6UbCdO4/trump-demands-fed-slash-rates-1-fomc-meeting-begins
