How High Interest Rates Upended the Economy

The Fed has been raising interest rates to cool inflation. While that seems to be working, there are a lot of side effects that can hit you right in the pocketbook!

Two Cents is hosted by Philip Olson, CFP® and Julia Lorenz-Olson, AFC®
Directors: Katie Graham & Andrew Matthews
Written by: Julia Lorenz-Olson, AFC®
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
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Edited & Animated by: Dano Johnson
Fact checker: Yvonne McGreevy
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Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

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Two Cents is a production of Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios

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[haute]

"While borrowing money has become more expensive, having money has become far more profitable." And so it goes.

[JosephDickson]

2007 I bought my home at the peak of the market at a high interest rate, then the crash, then a HARP refinance. For over a decade I somehow made it work. Then, interest rates get below 3% and I refinance. It's friggin crazy I'm finally feeling like my home was worth over a decade of stress.

[prettypic]

It's almost like this "good" economy only benefits the people who were already wealthy and screwed over anyone who actually at risk. I think it's LONG past time we stopped only looking at raw metrics and instead looked at how everyday people are affected

[__]

The economic landscape wasn’t as dramatic of a change as when mustache man Phil turned into Mr.Brightside
🎸

[calebhermann]

Love your videos. PBS for Adults but the way I felt when I was a kid.

[Iffy]

The home buying sideline is huge. It will be interesting to see what happens to already high home prices when the rates drop a couple percent.

[micahbush]

I mean, just look up historic mortgage rates, over the past 50 years or so, and you'll quickly find that the rates of the last decade or so were abnormally low. It kind of reminds me of how I would see people post photos showing gas prices on the same day in 2020 and 2021 and imply that gas prices were low under Trump and skyrocketed under Biden, but they failed to consider that the low 2020 price was overwhelmingly due to low demand from the pandemic and a massive surge in supply from Saudi Arabia during its price war with Russia.

[ipztjev]

I'm still in the glass half empty side because a lot of the world is actually going through quite the crisis right now. It just so happens that USA's spending addiction is prolonging the issue of their finances and actually not coming up with plans on addressing the issue outright or at least start to pay off its own accumulated debt is making the issue bigger and when it strikes it would have massive implications. Just imagine if a citizen asked to prolong their current debt levels forever even when they're dead as the banks would laugh at you for that proposition but when any government does it the institutions lending the money or form the contract bat an eye and sign blindly.

I'm also extremely annoyed at the disconnect at the stock market with the actual economy right now and argue they should be a reflection of each other and not be separate entities. This proves that the stock market isn't efficient at all and leverages trends and biases to keep inflating the bidding price of the stock price of certain assets and we're seeing how artificially this is done with leveraged option products. I will always mention that the government can fix this by creating standards on how money is created and what each unit should equate to with some unit of effort. But nope we continue to live through the subjective judgement of how rich people deserve their wealth and because of relaxed regulations without standards as long as you have a lot of money you can go "Rules for me and not for thee" basically.

[rtothec]

I like the Hannah Barbera sound effects.

[Blazewheat]

Credit Cards: maxed out
Money in the bank: cashed out
Mental health: crashed out

[KTSpeedruns]

Don't leave out the fact that half of the inflation is due to corporate greed.

You couldn't even be bothered to mention that housing is hard to buy because corporations and banks are buying them up with cash offers?

[NotShowingOff]

The overheating of the economy was in fact due to monopolization of industrial sectors.
The best way to stop this is to stop unfettered mergers. But that’s fiscal policy and legislation, which has stalled in the usa

[Aaron-cyvv]

Great video! I appreciate what you guys do 😊

[Esudao]

Really well researched and concise video. Currently in the process of looking for a home in the Netherlands. Prices dropped with the interest rate hike but are rising back now. Exciting!

[brookeherbert]

Thank you PBS and 2cents.
Adults need simple financial and economical explanations. I love these short form videos with big information.

[AKTBS]

Money shouldn’t be free. We should never go back to ZIRP

[tienf]

It's true. Price at Bob's Shop has gone up quit a bit.

[murphygreen]

Being in WA, 70 in the summer is still warm! We try and not go below 65 on the AC, but it's hard

[dipro]

3.2% still means prices are going up on top of already crazy price increases after covid. How are people actually expected to buy in the past rates when things are more than twice as expensive as they used to be?

[ryaj]

Interest rates aren’t high, it’s historically normal and still lower than the 70s 80s 90s and 2000s. And we are crying about interest rate but refuse to look at the prices???