Evelyn Reynolds

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    in Economy

    What the Fed’s Rate Hike Means for Mortgages

    What does the Fed’s decision to raise its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point mean for mortgages? [Here’s what the Fed’s decision means for credit cards, car loans and student loans.]Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages don’t move in tandem with the Fed’s benchmark rate, but instead track the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds, which are influenced by a variety of factors, including expectations around inflation, the Fed’s actions and how investors react to all of it.“We are seeing rates move up pretty briskly and a lot of that has to do with forward-looking expectations with where things are headed,” said Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac. “Maybe inflation will be stickier than the market thought.”Mortgage rates have jumped by two percentage points since the start of 2022, though they’ve held somewhat steady in recent months. But with consumer prices still surging, mortgage rates are on the rise once again — by some estimates, reaching as high as 6 percent.The closely watched rate averages from Freddie Mac won’t be released until Thursday, but they already began to tick a bit higher last week: Rates on 30-year fixed rate mortgages were 5.23 percent as of June 9, according to Freddie Mac’s primary mortgage survey, up from 5.09 percent the week before and 2.96 percent the same week in 2021.Other home loans are more closely tethered to the Fed’s move. Home equity lines of credit and adjustable-rate mortgages — which each carry variable interest rates — generally rise within two billing cycles after a change in the federal funds rates. More

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    in Economy

    What the Fed’s Rate Hike Means for Credit Cards and Student Loans

    The Fed’s decision to raise its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point is good news for savers, but less so for borrowers: They can expect to pay more on credit card debt, car loans and certain student loans. [Here’s what the Fed’s decision means for mortgages.]Credit CardsCredit card rates are closely linked to the Fed’s actions, so consumers with revolving debt can expect to see those rates rise, usually within one or two billing cycles. The average credit card rate was recently 16.73 percent, according to Bankrate.com, up from 16.34 percent in March.“With the frequency of Federal Reserve rate hikes this year, it will be a drumbeat of higher rates for cardholders every couple of statement cycles,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “And the cumulative effect is growing. If the Fed raises rates by a total of three percentage points this year, your credit card rate will be three percentage points higher by the first of the year.”Car LoansCar loans are also expected to climb, but those increases continue to be overshadowed by the rising cost of buying a vehicle (and the pain of what you’ll pay at the gas pump). Car loans tend to track the five-year Treasury, which is influenced by the federal funds rate — but that’s not the only factor that determines how much you’ll pay.A borrower’s credit history, the type of vehicle, loan term and down payment are all baked into that rate calculation.The average interest rate on new-car loans was 5.08 percent in May, according to Dealertrack, which provides business software to dealerships. That’s almost a full percentage point higher than December 2021, when rates had reached their lowest point since 2015 and when the firm began tracking rates.The average rate for used vehicles was 8.46 percent in May, also nearly a full percentage point higher than December. But those rates vary widely; borrowers with the lowest credit scores received average rates of 20 percent in May, Dealertrack said, whereas individuals with the most pristine credit histories received rates of 3.92 percent.Student LoansWhether the rate increase will affect your student loan payments depends on the type of loan you have.Current federal student loan borrowers — whose payments are on pause through August — aren’t affected because those loans carry a fixed rate set by the government.But new batches of federal loans are priced each July, based on the 10-year Treasury bond auction in May. Rates on those loans have already jumped: Borrowers with federal undergraduate loans disbursed after July 1 (and before July 1, 2023) will pay 4.99 percent, up from 3.73 percent for loans disbursed the year-earlier period.Private student loan borrowers should also expect to pay more; both fixed and variable-rate loans are linked to benchmarks that track the federal funds rate. Those increases usually show up within a month.But the Fed is not finished and has penciled in rates hitting 3.4 percent by the end of 2022. Private lenders will probably bake those and other expectations into their interest rates as well — meaning borrowers could end up paying anywhere from 1.5 to 1.9 percentage points more, depending on the length of the loan term, explained Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan expert and author of “How to Appeal for More College Financial Aid.” More

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    in Economy

    The Federal Reserve just hiked interest rates by 0.75 percentage point. How raising rates may help slow inflation

    Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting on May 4, 2022 in Washington, DC.
    Win McNamee | Getty Images

    The Fed’s main tool to battle inflation is interest rates

    The Federal Reserve has a few main goals with respect to the economy: to promote maximum employment, keep prices stable and ensure moderate long-term interest rates.

    Generally, the central bank aims to keep inflation around 2% annually, a number that lagged before the pandemic.

    Its main tool to battle inflation is interest rates. It does that by setting the short-term borrowing rate for commercial banks, and then those banks pass rates along to consumers and businesses, said Yiming Ma, an assistant finance professor at Columbia University Business School.
    That higher rate influences the interest you pay on everything from credit cards to mortgages to car loans, making borrowing more expensive. On the flip side, it also boosts rates on savings accounts.

    How raising rates can slow inflation

    But how do higher interest rates reel in inflation? They help by slowing down the economy, according to the experts.
    “The Fed uses interest rates as either a gas pedal or a brake on the economy when needed,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate. “With inflation running high, they can raise interest rates and use that to pump the brakes on the economy in an effort to get inflation under control.”  
    Basically, the Fed policymakers aim to make borrowing more expensive so that consumers and businesses hold off on making any investments, thereby cooling off demand and hopefully holding down prices.

    The Fed uses interest rates as either a gas pedal or a brake on the economy when needed.

    Greg McBride
    chief financial analyst, Bankrate

    There could also be a secondary effect of alleviating supply chain issues, one of the main reasons that prices are spiking right now, said McBride. Still, the central bank can’t directly influence or solve that particular problem, he said.
    “As long as the supply chain is an issue, we’re likely to be contending with” outsize wage gains, which drive inflation, he said.

    The Fed wants to avoid stalling the economy

    The main worry for economists is that the Fed raises interest rates too quickly and dampens demand too much, stalling the economy.
    This could lead to higher unemployment if businesses stop hiring or even lay off workers. If policymakers really overshoot on rate hikes, it could push the economy into a recession, halting and reversing the progress it has made so far.
    Treating inflation in the economy is like treating cancer with chemotherapy, said Sinclair of the Indeed Hiring Lab.

    “You have to kill parts of the economy to slow things down,” she said. “It’s not a pleasant treatment.”
    Of course, it will take some time for any action to affect the economy and curb inflation. That’s why the Federal Open Market Committee carefully watches economic data to decide how much and how frequently to raise rates.
    There is also some uncertainty due to the war in Ukraine, which has also increased prices on commodities such as gas. The Fed will have to watch how the war is hampering the U.S. economy and act accordingly.

    It might get worse before it gets better

    When the Fed does lift rates, it’s also likely that people will see the downsides of those increases before any improvement on inflation, said Sinclair.
    Basically, that means consumers may have to pay more to borrow money and still see higher prices at the gas pump and grocery store. That scenario is particularly tough on low-income workers, who have seen wages rise but not keep pace with inflation.
    Of course, ideally, the central bank would like to raise rates gradually so that the economy slows just enough to bring down prices without creating too much additional unemployment. The Fed wants to avoid a recession as well as the chance of stagflation — a situation in which inflation remains high while the economy slows.
    “They have to carefully walk that tightrope,” said Sinclair.
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    in Economy

    Inside Kraken’s Culture War Stoked by Its C.E.O.

    Jesse Powell, who leads the crypto exchange Kraken, has challenged the use of preferred pronouns, debated who can use racial slurs and called American women “brainwashed.”Jesse Powell, a founder and the chief executive of Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, recently asked his employees, “If you can identify as a sex, can you identify as a race or ethnicity?”He also questioned their use of preferred pronouns and led a discussion about “who can refer to another person as the N word.”And he told workers that questions about women’s intelligence and risk appetite compared with men’s were “not as settled as one might have initially thought.”In the process, Mr. Powell, a 41-year-old Bitcoin pioneer, ignited a culture war among his more than 3,000 workers, according to interviews with five Kraken employees, as well as internal documents, videos and chat logs reviewed by The New York Times. Some workers have openly challenged the chief executive for what they see as his “hurtful” comments. Others have accused him of fostering a hateful workplace and damaging their mental health. Dozens are considering quitting, said the employees, who did not want to speak publicly for fear of retaliation.Corporate culture wars have abounded during the coronavirus pandemic as remote work, inequity and diversity have become central issues at workplaces. At Meta, which owns Facebook, restive employees have agitated over racial justice. At Netflix, employees protested the company’s support for the comedian Dave Chappelle after he aired a special that was criticized as transphobic.But rarely has such angst been actively stoked by the top boss. And even in the male-dominated cryptocurrency industry, which is known for a libertarian philosophy that promotes freewheeling speech, Mr. Powell has taken that ethos to an extreme.His boundary pushing comes amid a deepening crypto downturn. On Tuesday, Coinbase, one of Kraken’s main competitors, said it was laying off 18 percent of its employees, following job cuts at Gemini and Crypto.com, two other crypto exchanges. Kraken — which is valued at $11 billion, according to PitchBook — is also grappling with the turbulence in the crypto market, as the price of Bitcoin has plunged to its lowest point since 2020.Mr. Powell’s culture crusade, which has largely played out on Kraken’s Slack channels, may be part of a wider effort to push out workers who don’t believe in the same values as the crypto industry is retrenching, the employees said.This month, Mr. Powell unveiled a 31-page culture document outlining Kraken’s “libertarian philosophical values” and commitment to “diversity of thought,” and told employees in a meeting that he did not believe they should choose their own pronouns. The document and a recording of the meeting were obtained by The Times.Those who disagreed could quit, Mr. Powell said, and opt into a program that would provide four months of pay if they affirmed that they would never work at Kraken again. Employees have until Monday to decide if they want to take part.On Monday, Christina Yee, a Kraken executive, gave those on the fence a nudge, writing in a Slack post that the “C.E.O., company, and culture are not going to change in a meaningful way.”“If someone strongly dislikes or hates working here or thinks those here are hateful or have poor character,” she said, “work somewhere that doesn’t disgust you.”After The Times contacted Kraken about its internal conversations, the company publicly posted an edited version of its culture document on Tuesday. In a statement, Alex Rapoport, a spokeswoman, said Kraken does not tolerate “inappropriate discussions.” She added that as the company more than doubled its work force in recent years, “we felt the time was right to reinforce our mission and our values.”Mr. Powell and Ms. Yee did not respond to requests for comment. In a Twitter thread on Wednesday in anticipation of this article, Mr. Powell said that “about 20 people” were not on board with Kraken’s culture and that even though teams should have more input, he was “way more studied on policy topics.”“People get triggered by everything and can’t conform to basic rules of honest debate,” he wrote. “Back to dictatorship.”The conflict at Kraken shows the difficulty of translating crypto’s political ideologies to a modern workplace, said Finn Brunton, a technology studies professor at the University of California, Davis, who wrote a book in 2019 about the history of digital currencies. Many early Bitcoin proponents championed freedom of ideas and disdained government intrusion; more recently, some have rejected identity politics and calls for political correctness.“A lot of the big whales and big representatives now — they’re trying to bury that history,” Mr. Brunton said. “The people who are left who really hold to that are feeling more embattled.”Mr. Powell, who attended California State University, Sacramento, started an online store in 2001 called Lewt, which sold virtual amulets and potions to gamers. A decade later, he embraced Bitcoin as an alternative to government-backed money.In 2011, Mr. Powell worked on Mt. Gox, one of the first crypto exchanges, helping the company navigate a security issue. (Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014.)Mr. Powell founded Kraken later in 2011 with Thanh Luu, who sits on the company’s board. The start-up operates a crypto exchange where investors can trade digital assets. Kraken had its headquarters in San Francisco but is now a largely remote operation. It has raised funds from investors like Hummingbird Ventures and Tribe Capital.As cryptocurrency prices skyrocketed in recent years, Kraken became the second-largest crypto exchange in the United States behind Coinbase, according to CoinMarketCap, an industry data tracker. Mr. Powell said last year that he was planning to take the company public.He also insisted that some workers subscribe to Bitcoin’s philosophical underpinnings. “We have this ideological purity test,” Mr. Powell said about the company’s hiring process on a 2018 crypto podcast. “A test of whether you’re kind of aligned with the vision of Bitcoin and crypto.”In 2019, former Kraken employees posted scathing comments about the company on Glassdoor, a website where workers write anonymous reviews of their employers.“Kraken is the perfect allegory for any utopian government ideal,” one reviewer wrote. “Great ideas in theory but in practice they end up very controlling, negative and mistrustful.”In response, Kraken’s parent company sued the anonymous reviewers and tried to force Glassdoor to reveal their identities. A court ordered Glassdoor to turn over some names.On Glassdoor, Mr. Powell has a 96 percent approval rating. The site adds, “This employer has taken legal action against reviewers.”Kraken is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.KrakenAt Kraken, Mr. Powell is part of a Slack group called trolling-999plus, according to messages viewed by The Times. The group is labeled “… and you thought 4chan was full of trolls,” referring to the anonymous online message board known for hate speech and radicalizing some of the gunmen behind mass shootings.In April, a Kraken employee posted a video internally on a different Slack group that set off the latest fracas. The video featured two women who said they preferred $100 in cash over a Bitcoin, which at the time cost more than $40,000. “But this is how female brain works,” the employee commented.Mr. Powell chimed in. He said the debate over women’s mental abilities was unsettled. “Most American ladies have been brainwashed in modern times,” he added on Slack, in an exchange viewed by The Times.His comments fueled a furor.“For the person we look to for leadership and advocacy to joke about us being brainwashed in this context or make light of this situation is hurtful,” wrote one female employee.“It isn’t heartening to see your gender’s minds, capabilities, and preferences discussed like this,” another wrote. “It’s incredibly othering and harmful to women.”“Being offended is not being harmed,” Mr. Powell responded. “A discussion about science, biology, attempting to determine facts of the world cannot be harmful.”At a companywide meeting on June 1, Mr. Powell was discussing Kraken’s global footprint, with workers in 70 countries, when he veered to the topic of preferred pronouns. It was time for Kraken to “control the language,” he said on the video call.“It’s just not practical to allow 3,000 people to customize their pronouns,” he said.That same day, he invited employees to join him in a Slack channel called “debate-pronouns” where he suggested that people use pronouns based not on their gender identity but their sex at birth, according to conversations seen by The Times. He shut down replies to the thread after it became contentious.Mr. Powell reopened discussion on Slack the next day to ask why people couldn’t choose their race or ethnicity. He later said the conversation was about who could use the N-word, which he noted wasn’t a slur when used affectionately.Mr. Powell also circulated the culture document, titled “Kraken Culture Explained.”“We Don’t Forbid Offensiveness,” read one section. Another said employees should show “tolerance for diverse thinking”; refrain from labeling comments as “toxic, hateful, racist, x-phobic, unhelpful, etc.”; and “avoid censoring others.”It also explained that the company had eschewed vaccine requirements in the name of “Krakenite bodily autonomy.” In a section titled “self-defense,” it said that “law-abiding citizens should be able to arm themselves.”“You may need to regularly consider these crypto and libertarian values when making work decisions,” it said.In the edited version of the document that Kraken publicly posted, mentions of Covid-19 vaccinations and the company’s belief in letting people arm themselves were omitted.Those who disagreed with the document were encouraged to depart. At the June 1 meeting, Mr. Powell unveiled the “Jet Ski Program,” which the company has labeled a “recommitment” to its core values. Anyone who felt uncomfortable had two weeks to leave, with four months’ pay.“If you want to leave Kraken,” read a memo about the program, “we want it to feel like you are hopping on a jet ski and heading happily to your next adventure!”Kitty Bennett More

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    Here's everything the Fed is expected to announce, including the biggest rate hike in 28 years

    The Federal Reserve on Wednesday is expected to raise benchmark borrowing rates by three-quarters of a percentage point.
    In addition, the central bank will update its outlook on rates ahead as well as its estimates for GDP, unemployment and inflation.

    The Federal Reserve on Wednesday is expected to do something it hasn’t done in 28 years — increase interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point.
    In response to soaring inflation and volatile financial markets, the central bank will hike the rate that banks charge each other for overnight borrowing to a range of 1.5%-1.75%, where it hasn’t been since before the Covid pandemic crisis began.

    That rate feeds through to consumer borrowing, impacting virtually all adjustable-rate products such as credit cards and home equity loans.
    Along with the rate increase, here’s a quick look at what the Fed also likely will do:

    Adjust its future outlook for interest rates via its “dot plot” of individual members’ expectations.
    Update its outlook for gross domestic product, inflation and unemployment. Economists figure the Fed will decrease its expectations for GDP this year while raising forecasts for inflation and the unemployment rate.
    Change the language in its post-meeting statement to reflect current conditions, namely that inflation is running at a faster pace than anticipated, requiring more aggressive actions to contain price increases running at their fastest level since December 1981.

    Goldman Sachs said new language in the statement could indicate that the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee “anticipates that raising the target range expeditiously will be appropriate until it sees clear and convincing evidence that inflation is moderating,” which the firm said implies “a high bar for reverting to 25bp hikes.”

    US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference in Washington, DC, on May 4, 2022.
    Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

    Following the FOMC meeting, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will address the media. The decision is due at 2:00 p.m. ET and Powell will speak 30 minutes after that.
    Powell will be called on to explain the Fed’s recent shift in rate expectations. He and other officials had been pushing the narrative that consecutive rate increases of 50 basis points would be the most likely course.

    In fact, at his last news conference in May, Powell dismissed 75 basis points as an option, saying it was “not something the committee is actively considering.” A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.
    Now, Powell could provide indications that multiple 75 basis point hikes are possible if inflation readings don’t start to come down.

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    The risk of recession is growing. Here's why recessions may be inevitable

    Some economists argue that recessions have become an inevitable part of the economic cycle that fluctuates between periods of expansion and contraction.
    The Federal Reserve has attempted to avoid a recession by engineering what’s known as a “soft landing,” but successfully pulling it off is extremely rare.
    Policies often have a clear limitation on what they can achieve against an impending downturn.

    The U.S. has experienced at least 30 recessions throughout history, dating back as early as 1857.
    Some economists argue that they may have become an inevitable part of the financial cycle that fluctuates between periods of expansion and contraction.

    “History teaches us that recessions are inevitable,” said David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution. “I think there are things we can do with a policy that makes recessions less likely or when they occur, less severe. We’ve learned a lot, but we haven’t learned enough to say that we’re never going to have another recession.”
    As the nation’s authority on monetary policies, the Federal Reserve plays a critical role in managing recessions.
    The Fed is currently attempting to avoid a recession by engineering what’s known as a “soft landing,” in which incremental interest rate hikes are used to curb inflation without pushing the economy into recession.
    “What they’re trying to do is raise rates enough so demand slows,” said Jason Snipe, chief investment officer at Odyssey Capital Advisors.
    But a successful soft landing is extremely rare as the monetary policy needed to slow down the economy is often enforced too late to make any meaningful impact.

    It was arguably achieved just once, in 1994, thanks to the Fed’s more proactive response to inflation and good timing.
    “[It’s] really, really difficult to get into that really, really narrow zone,” said Stephen Miran, former senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Treasury. “It’s the difference between trying to land an airplane in a really wide and spacious open field versus trying to land an airplane on a very, very narrow piece of land with rocks and water on either side.”
    Some experts also argue that policies have a limitation on what they can achieve against an impending downturn.
    “Policy tends to operate with long lags, which means the ability to effect immediate change in the economy is quite slow. I also think that increasingly we live in a global economy where the cross-currents that are impacting the economic dynamics are very complex,” said Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer, wealth management at Morgan Stanley.
    “These are dynamics that the Fed doesn’t have the tools to address and so to a certain extent, we do think that policymakers have certainly developed more tools to fight recessions,” she said. “But we don’t think that you can rely on policymakers to prevent recessions”
    Watch the video to find out more about why recessions could be inevitable.

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    Retail sales posted unexpected 0.3% decline in May as inflation hammers consumers

    Retail and food service spending posted a surprise 0.3% decline in May, below the estimate for a 0.1% increase.
    Spending at gas stations led but was offset by declines elsewhere, according to numbers that are not adjusted for inflation.

    Retail sales turned negative in May as consumers pulled back spending while inflation surged, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
    Advance retail and food service spending fell 0.3% for the month, below the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.1% gain. Excluding autos, sales were up 0.5%, which fell short of expectations for a 0.8% increase.

    The numbers are not adjusted for inflation, which increased 1% for the month on the headline number and 0.6% excluding food and energy.
    Sales were well below the pace in April, which posted a downwardly revised 0.7% increase from the initial 0.9% estimate.
    Spending for the month declined even though sales at gas stations increased 4% due to fuel prices that scaled new heights, with regular unleaded hitting $4.43 a gallon in May and now running around $5. That growth was offset by a 3.5% decline at motor vehicle and parts dealers.
    Miscellaneous store retailers saw a 1.1% drop in sales, while online stores posted a 1% decline. Bars and restaurants registered a 0.7% increase, part of a broader trend that has seen spending gradually shift from goods back to services.
    On a yearly basis, sales were still up 8.1% as spending, combined with higher prices, has put a floor under the numbers. Consumers have been resilient through the inflation wave, using savings to compensate for the higher costs.
    The retail release comes the same day the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point in an effort to tame inflation. The consumer price index for May reflected an 8.6% year-over-year increase, the highest since December 1981 and far above the Fed’s 2% target.

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