The US Federal Reserve in the Age of Trump

Washington

IT became a sort of political ritual in Washington in the last eight years: Members of the policymaking committee of the US Federal Reserve would conclude their monthly meeting with a predictable decision not to raise interest rates, noting that inflationary pressures remained weak, the labour markets were shaky and wages weren't rising.

The Fed had begun cutting rates on Sept 18, 2007, as the financial crisis started to spread and supplementing that approach on rates with two massive bond and securities buying programmes aka "quantitative easing", or QE1 and QE2.