| The Fed can't easily raise rates all the way up to 8%. The higher rates affect the government just as much as you buying a new home or taking out a loan, and the government has a shitload of debt it has to keep refinancing. "But with help from the Treasury and from Social Security’s actuaries, I’ve come up with a reasonable estimate of that added interest cost. By my math, the Fed’s higher rates will increase the federal government’s interest costs by about $128 billion a year." That may not sound like much, given the trillions of dollars of investment wealth that have been vaporized by the Fed’s higher rates. Or given the $1.4 trillion deficit President Biden’s proposed budget projects for this year. But $128 billion is in the vicinity of the $133 billion total that the Biden budget is seeking for the Energy, Homeland Security and Agriculture Departments. Or is just $2 billion below the total that the Biden budget proposes to spend for the Interior Department, the Labor Department, the Commerce Department, the Treasury, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Social Security Administration and the Corps of Engineers. Combined."[1] "Already, the federal government spends $330 billion per year, or $2,207 per taxpayer, on interest payments – more than on food stamps and disability insurance combined. And two-thirds of our debt is slated to roll over in the next five years, likely into higher interest rate bonds. For every 1 percentage point increase in interest rates above projections, deficits grow by $2 trillion over a decade; that’s on top of the nearly $13 trillion in projected borrowing over the next decade."[2] [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/27/fed-rate-... [2]: https://www.crfb.org/press-releases/feds-interest-rate-hike-... |
The annual budget is about $6 trillion.
They certainly can eat another $128B or even $500B.
After all, when inflation is higher than interest rates, the real yield is negative.