Wes Moss (20:23)
Of course you would. Of course you would. You're the producer for the Clark Howard show and a host. Of course you would. So what did that do? It made people say money was cheap. I can buy another house, I can move, lots of activity. Housing market was booming and a lot of that had to do with the Fed and interest rates. Today, the housing market's totally on ice. There's no movement in the housing market on a relative basis. We see existing home sales at the lowest level we've seen for decades. A, because people locked in low rates and don't want to move, and B, mortgage rates are still really high because the Fed hasn't really lowered rates a whole lot. So it's a really good example of how powerful those Fed decisions on where they put interest rates. They really matter to the economy, some sectors more than others. Housing is a great example. Now, if you go back over the course of history and you can't see this chart here, but I went back to the late 90s or the early 90s, the fed funds rate was right around this 5% range. And it was through the 90s, it was through 2000. And then as we got into then we had a recession and the Fed lowered rates and called 2001. And then the economy got back to more normal and we started to have a housing boom. And then we all know what happened in 2006, really 2007, we had a total housing bust. And what happened The Fed had to lower interest rates to try to stimulate the economy. So the Fed funds rate went from 5% down to zero over the course of a couple months. Huge change in the economy. Then the economy somewhat normalized and eventually we were getting back to normal rates. Call it the year 2017, 2018. The Fed's raising interest rates at every meeting. We're trying to get back to quote, normal. I don't know if there's an actual normal, but it's, it's not. Zero is not normal, ten is not normal. So somewhere in between is more normal, 4 or 5%. And as we were headed back to normalizing interest rates, what happened? The pandemic happened. Economy shut down, everyone freaked out. How could we shut down the economy? Well, we need all the stimulus we can. And almost in a very short period of time, Fed took rates back down to zero again. Then the economy started to recover. And what happened? We had huge inflation, huge inflation. So what is their tool? Let's close up the gas line. Let's slim down. How much gas is getting to the engine. They did it by raising rates. It went from 0 to 5% in a very short period of time. And it slowed everything down, particularly housing slowed inflation down. So it worked. Now the question is, where are we headed from here? Higher rates are actually really good for savers. When we say saver, we are trying to delineate someone who would prefer to buy and own bonds, money markets, CDs and just get an interest rate over owning stock. So savers were really rewarded here. Money market rates are pumping out 5%. You could just leave your money in a Treasury money market and, or some sort of even short term bond fund. And we're getting highly compensated for it now. And I'm not really going into. Yes, there's all these political calls for Jerome Powell too late at lowering rates. What really matters is that inflation, the late latest inflation number we got was that CPI was 2.7%. That's not as low, as quite as low as they want it, but it's pretty close to the 2% level. So the Fed can say, okay, we have inflation in check number two. The latest jobs report revised down how many jobs we've been adding. So really we haven't been adding that many jobs now. We haven't been losing a lot, but we haven't added a lot either. So the labor market's cooling, that all gives the Fed cover to lower rates again. It's very likely that that will start happening at their next several meetings. The next one is middle September. It's widely expected. And there's a Fed fund tracker out there that shows there's over a 90% chance that the Fed is going to cut rates by at least a quarter of a percent, maybe more. And the projections for where rates are going to be in six months from then, very hard to predict. But the indications that they'll continue to lower rates, and that has implications. We're no longer getting to sit in a money market account getting 5%. That rate's already come down to the 4 level and a little below 4 if they keep cutting. What we all need to be really cognizant of, are we just leaving money in money markets forever? And those rates will change almost overnight. They're really quick, you know, like the gas station is really slow to lower gas prices. Even when energy prices go down, money market rates are really quick to lower the rate because they're paying you out. So as soon as the Fed funds rate goes down, your money market rates will start to go down literally within the same week.