With the London Economist, Financial Times and other mouthpieces for the City of London hollering editorially that the Fed simply had to slow down on QE and raise interest rates to prevent a hyperinflationary blowout of the entire system, the Federal Reserve announced that they will do that next year, just at the conclusion of today’s Federal Open Market Commission (FOMC) meeting. QE, which had been barreling ahead at the rate of $120 billion per month, was “tapered” to $105 billion in November, and December is announced to come in at $90 billion. After that, the Fed plans to start the year at $60 billion a month, and will go down quickly to $0 per month—at least hypothetically. Their inflation projection for 2021, they admitted, was raised substantially from 4.2% to 5.3%—and even that grossly understates the reality on the ground for most Americans.
“After that [tapering] wraps up, in late winter or early spring,” CNBC reported today, “the central bank expects to start raising interest rates, which were held steady at this week’s meeting.” The “consensus” among Fed members was that rates would be raised three times in the course of 2022.
