Fed in ‘Full Recession-Creating Mode’ Comes Under Fire for Another Interest Rate Hike

Progressive economists and other critics on Wednesday called out the U.S. Federal Reserve for officially announcing its widely expected third 75-basis-point interest rate hike this year.

While addressing the decision during an afternoon press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell also said that “we anticipate that ongoing increases will be appropriate” to meet the central bank’s goal of returning inflation to 2%.

With each rate hike—and other central banks following suit—warnings of a global recession have mounted, and opponents of the Fed’s approach have stressed that low-income workers and other marginalized people are bound to bear the brunt of the negative impacts.

“It’s a central bank in full recession-creating mode,” Crooked Media editor-in-chief Brian Beutler said Wednesday after the Federal Reserve rose its rate up to a range of 3%-3.25%.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a vocal critic of previous hikes, was among those who focused on the expected effects for those who can least afford another rate increase.

“Chair Powell just announced another extreme interest rate hike while forecasting higher unemployment,” she said Wednesday. “I’ve been warning that Chair Powell’s Fed would throw millions of Americans out of work—and I fear he’s already on the path to doing so.”

Janelle Jones, chief economist at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), similarly said that “today the Fed decided to risk mass joblessness in its fight against inflation. Raising interest rates, and pushing the economy toward a recession, will result in millions of workers facing unemployment or taking pay cuts.”

“And we know who those workers will be,” she continued. “The workers most likely to face an economic crisis are workers of color, women, and low-wage workers. The same groups who already face worse economic outcomes in the labor market.”

In addition to also emphasizing that “raising interest rates puts the burden of fighting inflation on low-wage workers,” former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich suggested that “for once, let’s take aim at an actual driver of inflation: corporate profits.”

Specifically, Reich—now a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley—advocated for a windfall profits tax, price controls, higher taxes on corporations and the rich, and reining in monopoly power.

Noting another tweet from Reich with those same messages, Groundwork Collaborative argued Wednesday that he is “exactly right” that the Fed’s recent moves largely burden lower-wage people and “corporate profits must be the target, not workers.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.