Much has been written and broadcast over the past few weeks in the financial media and the business pages of general-interest newspapers debating the wisdom of the decision in December by Fed Chair Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade.
On one side of this debate are people who say that the Fed needs to do this to prevent inflation from taking off. On the other side are people who warn that pushing up interest rates at a time when unemployment is still at a historically high level (and when real unemployment is more than double the official 5% rate) risks making things worse.
The increase of 0.25% in the Federal Reserve’s benchmark federal funds rate — the rate banks charge each other for holding short-term funds — was pretty minimal, but the arguments for raising the rate at all are absurd on their face.