This is where I'm at....not trying to get political, but it's hard not to discuss the situation without at least trying to gather what's happening at the top level.
In short, these moves are being made to get Powell to lower rates sooner than the Fed planned. True, not true, I don't know, but it's the only thing I can think of that makes any sense in here.
Problem is, lowering the rates don't do much of anything under the current circumstances. Rates are a way to get people spending more or slowing them down. That in turn impacts the amount of money in the economy. They don't address uncertainty/predictability/confidence. All those things are what is driving our current reactions not the amount of money in the economy. I guess you can make the argument that someone with incredibly narrow tunnel vision would key on this one particular indicator and interpret it as "confidence" in the economy thus triggering them to spend again, but that number can't be a large enough number to matter and its certainly not going to be the people educated in economics/finance.
But it would allow people to refinance debt obligations and save money as well as provide cheaper leverage to buy, right?
Look, I'm not trying to be John Maynard Kaynes over here but there is a very loud clamor right now to drop the Fed rate. It's in the article I posted. It's not a singular source either.
The appropriate response to this will get me another TO because we aren't allowed to talk about those realities here. To your first part, yes people would be allowed to refinance things. But think about what's happened in the last few years. We had interest rates in the high 2s low 3s just a few years ago. MOST refinanced then. We aren't getting to those levels in a stagflation scenario. Those wanting a refinance now want it most likely because they ran up a debt while interest rates were high because of inflation. They ran up the debt because they couldn't come up with the funds to keep up with inflation. You lower the rates, inflation is likely going to accelerate again and it's going to escalate quicker with the higher prices on goods. This doesn't even include the scenarios where companies just gouge people and claim either tariffs or inflation as the reason. All were doing in the short term is increasing the wealth gap.
The first person in this thread to use the word "Stagflation" in here is me.
As I've said in here now multiple times, the people forcing policy want cheaper interest rates for 2 reasons:
1) inflation to them is a rounding error. You think the Super rich care about gas prices or eggs? Cmon.
But guess what? They control policy now so....
2) they can refinance debt on skyscrapers and resorts. This isn't about mortgages. This is about guys with debts in the billions.
3) Wealth gap! Yes! They want it wider! You disagree?