Currently the US has a number of simultaneous stimulus policies in motion "The $1.5 trillion tax cut that President Trump signed into law late last year, combined with a looming agreement to increase federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, would deliver a larger short-term fiscal boost than President Barack Obama and Democrats packed into their $835 billion stimulus package in the Great Recession. With the US inflation rate still between 1.5 and 2.0 % Are we seeing real Growth with positive returns ie $1 spent $1.20 created or are we witnessing artificial growth $ 1 spent $0.3 created? Under the later scenario interest rate rise can't be afforded " Higher interest rates would raise federal borrowing costs as the United States continues to borrow heavily — the national debt has topped $22 trillion and annual deficits are creeping up toward $1 trillion. Treasury officials said last week that the United States will need to borrow $441 billion in privately held debt this quarter, the largest sum since 2010, when the economy was emerging from the worst downturn since the Great Depression." “This is exactly the wrong fiscal policy at the wrong time,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “We should be bringing down the debt and ensuring we have room for stimulus during downturns. Instead we are overheating the economy and selling out the future. It’s shortsighted and foolhardy.” " The likely spending increases include money for the military, domestic programs and disaster aid, along with a plan to shore up faltering multiemployer pension plans. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that those increases will cost more than $500 billion, and that congressional negotiators are mulling roughly $100 billion in revenue increases to offset them, yielding a deficit increase of $400 billion." What I'm questioning is there real growth? If yes the we will see gradual rate increase, if no, rate increases will kill off the little artificial growth in place. Australian interest rates won't be moving any time soon until the real economic picture emerges from the political fog and the house of mirror policies being used to project a Typical Hollywood great western.
