Press Releases
As Lawmakers’ Concerns Grow, Will Fed Leadership Commit to End Rate Hikes?
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ahead of Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr’s testimony in front of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, And Urban Affairs and House Financial Services Committee this week, Accountable.US is calling on the Fed’s leadership to ease their overly aggressive interest rate hikes and protect working families from an engineered economic downturn.
These hearings come amid a growing chorus of warnings from a wide array of economic experts, labor leaders, and lawmakers about the Fed’s rate hikes – as documented in a recent analysis from Accountable.US. Their concern: hiking interest rates too quickly could make inflation worse and further hurt working-class Americans – an alarming trend exacerbated by the Fed’s recent 75 basis points interest rate hike, the sixth increase in eight months that could cost as many as 3.2 million people their jobs by the end of 2023.
Instead of confronting the corporate greed at the root of inflation, the Fed has continued to cater to demands from big banks, hedge funds and other Wall Street special interests at the expense of the economy. It’s a choice that has led to reckless rate hikes that stand to threaten the fate of millions of jobs. These hearings will force the Fed to answer for their actions: will they do the right thing and pause interest rate hikes to protect working families, or continue to speed up the arrival of an otherwise avoidable recession? Hopefully, Vice Chair Barr will respond transparently to the concerns of Congress – and working Americans – regarding what lies ahead for our economy.”
