As interest rates rise on everything from mortgages to car loans to Treasurys, interest is also rising on credit card debt. That’s not exactly great news, as so many indicators point to a recession—and the worsening job situation that comes with it—on the horizon. Many Americans may soon find themselves with more debt and higher interest rates, all while real wages are falling.
In a recent speech, one of the lesser-known Fed Governors, Philip N. Jefferson, discussed the importance of having a home:
Money laundering is the process of concealing the source of funds derived from illicit activities to present a veneer of legitimacy. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, yearly money laundering flows account for 2.7 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).
In his recent article targeting the collapse of the FTX exchange, Ryan McMaken noted that the easy money regime we have lived under for more than two decades has led to yet another bubble with a spectacular crash. Enron and WorldCom blew up in the wake of the first bubble; Lehman Brothers and other investment banks and Wall Street firms went down in the 2008 collapse of the infamous housing bubble.
Does America simply lack the political will to face economic reality?
In the teeth of the Depression, Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon famously told President Herbert Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate”—in other words, to resist bailing out any industry through state intervention. This was a tough sell even in those days, and of course Hoover succumbed to politics and took the opposite approach, greatly and needlessly damaging the US economy for decades to come.
