Why the Federal Reserve Cannot Increase Interest Rates

A very interesting chart from Mish Shedlock. You can see that the Federal Reserve can never raise interest rates as it will spike the interest payments on its debt from the current $400 billion, which can be found here, to over $1 trillion.

Interest Impact Comparison

As you know, the tax revenues are only $3 trillion at this moment. If interest payments go to $1 trillion, the interest payment as a percentage of tax revenues will go over 30%. Which is even worse than Japan's 25% today. On top of these interest payments, we have several spending programs which will result in a total spending of more than $4 trillion. $4 trillion minus $3 trillion is a 1 trillion deficit/year at least.

This means, the Federal Reserve cannot ever increase interest rates. Especially when tax revenues will come down due to the low savings rate and high real unemployment.

Not to mention what would happen to adjustable mortgage rates and the housing market, where everyone is now using adjustable rate mortgages to profit from low rates. Knowing this, we will always have negative real interest rates as inflation will be kept at 2% and nominal interest rates at 0%. A great environment for precious metals.