One of America's most powerful not-elected people... is Fed Chairman Jerome Powell (the guy who calls your number at the DMV is 2nd). Jerry announced Wednesday the Fed is not raising interest rates because the economy's not too hot — it thinks GDP will only grow 2.1% this year, not the 2.3% first expected.
A strong economy needs to be brought down a tad... and increasing interest rates usually does the trick: People simply can't borrow as easily to splurge when rates are higher. But the Fed's stopped increasing rates:
- In December it raised its "one rate to rule them all" by 0.25% to 2.5%. It then predicted 2 more increases in 2019
- Those raises haven't happened. And most of the Fed's 17 decision-makers don't think rates need to be hiked this year at all.
Inflation's being really weird... The US economy's been growing since the '08 financial crisis and the unemployment rate's historically low. But for some reason prices aren't rising like they should in a strong economy. Maybe it's Amazon, Netflix, and Uber driving prices of things down. Economists simply aren't sure.