Hacker News Reader

Politics. Rates had to go down for the re-election effort.

Rates went down because the underlying economy was seeing slowing growth; particularly due to impacts of the trade war.

Trump on the one side of his mouth was trumping up "record economic growth!" but on the other side of his mouth was complaining "the economy will crash if they raise rates!"

It is crazy that the Democrats are the fiscal conservatives these days while the Republicans are much more irresponsible (though Obama and Biden are definitely nowhere near Clinton in terms of responsibility, they are way more responsible than Bush/Trump).

I think that is probably naive, they can't raise rates for many reasons including the fact that it would basically immediately blow up significant parts of the economy that are only enabled/possible due to rock bottom rates

"immediately blow up" - if such fragility exists, is it a good thing? I mean, even raising rates a few basis points causes such collapse...

No I think it's an awful situation, but lawmakers and governments have made the bed for us by stepping in over and over to rescue and backstop failing entities and sectors time and time again which has allowed what would otherwise be insolvent and long ago bankrupted entities and business models to flourish

Reply on news.ycombinator.com