The Federal Reserve should raise interest rates at its policy meeting next week even though last month’s jobs report was weaker than forecast, says John Crudele, a financial columnist at the New York Post.
“The job figures probably aren’t going to look any better this summer. And so there will probably be less opportunity to raise rates over the next six months,” he said in a June 6 column. “The Fed’s extremely low rate policy is hurting millions of savers in the U.S. and creating a bubble in the stock market that is drawing in more and more people who shouldn’t risk their wealth in equities.”
During the 2008 financial crisis that led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the Fed lowered interest rates to record lows near zero percent. When that policy wasn’t enough to drive growth, the central bank started spending trillions of dollars on U.S. Treasury and