
If we accept that the Federal Reserve's 0% interest rate position has propped up the US economy and that it plans to maintain this position so as to prevent a "W" shaped recession/recovery, then the important question to ask ourselves is what COULD cause the Fed to increase rates?
(1) China's demand that it do so?
True, China has a huge amount of US $ reserves and is a large financier of our current and future debt. However, this is also the reason that China can't dictate our rate policy. China doesn't like the low rates because its driving the value of the dollar down. However, China can't sell its huge reserves while the currency is declining - that would result in huge losses for them. China also can't afford to stop acquiring US debt because that would hurt the US economy - and no matter how resilient China has been emerging from this catastrophe, the truth is - China is still dependent on US consumers to import their goods for the time being. That structure can't change over night or even within a year or two.
(2) Inflation and/or improving unemployment
The Fed is mandated (legislatively) to keep inflation in check and to fight high unemployment. This means that the Fed won't raise rates until unemployment improves (which consensus economic thought expects unemployment to peak in the middle of 2010 and come down only marginally through the rest of the 2010 year). This, coupled with a weak economy that has significant economic slack (which holds down inflation risks) and banks not lending (which keeps money out of the economy and holds down inflation) --- all this points to continued reasons for the Fed to keep interest rates near 0% throughout 2010, and PERHAPS well into 2011.
(3) A chaotic decline in the value of the US $ or the US economy
This may be the most interesting case - however, the decline in the US dollar appears to steady for the time being - and logically so, as even the traders who are betting against the US currency realize that a total freefall in the value of the US $ would seriously undermine and jeopardize the current market rally (along with all the trader profit they've accumulated thus far).
A final thought is how far the decline in the US $ can go (even if it do so in an orderly fashion)... the further the $ declines, the higher commodity prices will increase. Crude oil for example is currently at $80. Economists predict that if it rises to $100, this would have the same economic impact on the US that the $147 crude oil price level had in 2008. This could result in seriously hampering the US economy in a not-so-orderly manner.
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