Up Your Interest

The Federal Reserve raising interest rates is a proper tool when there is irrational exuberance on the part of consumers engaged in unrestrained spending on elective purchases. The inflation America has indeed faced recently is caused by market chaos due to petroleum prices and supplies being destabilized because of the conflict with the mullah regime in Iran, and all the downstream rise in cost of everything made with or transported using oil. The Fed upping interest rates does absolutely nothing to stabilize gasoline and diesel prices, nor the cost of goods made with oil or oil byproducts, nor hold down the cost of transport of virtually everything that is shipped at least at some point using petrol. The rise in rates just further punishes people who are already suffering from increased costs that were in no way their fault. This is the same stupidity as being punitive by raising interests folks have to pay when it is not them but government itself that is engaged in frivolous spending. Fiscal and monetary tools should only be deployed when Congress has already cut back their spree of spending like drunken sailors which last happened during the years Clinton was President but was forced to make deals with a Republican majority in control of Congress. Why make working people suffer more when it is a war of choice America embarked upon and crazy expenditures by the Federal government that have stoked inflation, not anything Joe or Jane is doing when they have already cut back spending everywhere else to be able to afford their drive to and from work?