{"id":31698,"date":"2015-12-19T04:40:02","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T03:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/?p=31698"},"modified":"2015-12-19T06:49:07","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T05:49:07","slug":"31698","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/31698\/","title":{"rendered":"Fed Uptick on Interest Rates and Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div id=\"share_gutter\" class=\"shareTools is_stuck\">\n<div class=\"addthis_sharing_toolbox\">\n<div class=\"more-tools more-tools--hidden\">\u00a0The Fed has been accused of exacerbating inequality. Seven years of near-zero interest rates have hurt Americans looking to put money aside for retirement (effectively losing money in deposit accounts when inflation is taken into account), but helped the wealthiest by propping up the value of share prices and other assets.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article_bodycopy\">\n<p>Fed officials believed the \u201cwealth effect\u201d from quantitative easing would benefit the broader economy \u2013 akin to the Republican premise of trickle-down economics \u2013 by allowing people with more valuable assets to spend more. This has not happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no_name\">The 20 richest Americans have amassed a fortune that is larger than all the wealth of the least wealthy half of the population, 152 million people, according to a recent study by the Institute for Policy Studies, with the biggest income gains coming in the last six years. Since 2009, some 95 per cent of the earnings growth has floated to the top 1 per cent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no_name\">Almost 50 per cent of US aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29 per cent in 1970, Pew Research said in a report last week showing a hollowing-out of America\u2019s middle class. The share going to middle-income households has fallen from 62 per cent in 1970 to 43 per cent in 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no_name\">The Fed\u2019s rate hike may not help alleviate the pain of economic inequality either. Banks and credit unions may decide to keep interest rates on savings low while cranking up rates on mortgages and other consumer loans, using the higher rates to recover fees and boost profits. \u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Fed-Uptick-on-Interest-Rates-and-Inequality.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Fed Uptick on Interest Rates and Inequality<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"no_name\" style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/30689\/inequality-8\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-30690\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-30690\" src=\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Inequality1.jpg\" alt=\"Inequality\" width=\"493\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Inequality1.jpg 493w, https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Inequality1-300x175.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 493px) 100vw, 493px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"no_name\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0The Fed has been accused of exacerbating inequality. Seven years of near-zero interest rates have hurt Americans looking to put money aside for retirement (effectively losing money in deposit accounts when inflation is taken into account), but helped the wealthiest &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/31698\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-inequality"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31698"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31712,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31698\/revisions\/31712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}