February 28, 2022
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The Fed
The Fed is working to fight inflation for the first time in decades, fueling a debate over a key question: Are there alternative ways to fight inflation and avoid recession?
Fed funds rate increase = job losses and recession. There hasn’t been an unemployment rate increase of even .35% without causing a recession.
Highlights
- The conflict in Russia has added even more complexity to the Fed’s decision, exacerbating higher oil prices and other commodities while leaving us with less to spend after paying those prices.
Russian Sanctions
The Russians are masters of misinformation. A week ago, they were withdrawing. This past week, they were sending in peacekeeping forces. Now, they’re trying to eliminate Naziism in Ukraine (never mind that Ukraine’s leader is Jewish). They are also afraid of having NATO in Ukraine.
While some sanctions became slightly stronger on Saturday, they are meaningless. Putin didn’t care about sanctions in 2014. Are we to believe he cares now?
Highlights
- Sanctions include:
- Cutting off sovereign debt from Western financing disabling trade with Western markets
- Prohibiting US financial institutions from processing transactions for VEB and Russia’s military bank (PSB - 80% of all foreign-exchange transactions conducted by Russian financial institutions are in US dollars
- Freezing assets under US jurisdiction
- Prohibit exports of US military items and other sensitive technology that is crucial for Russian defense including: semiconductors, telecommunications, encryption security, lasers, sensors, avionics, and maritime technologies
- Germany halted Nord Stream
- On Saturday, US and EU announced they’d be eliminating several Russian banks (TBD) from SWIFT
