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Ben Bernanke and the Fed decided today to leave their federal funds rate at its current level of 2%.  They’re finally starting to worry about inflation and seem to think that there is much more upside risk (by inflation of course) than downside risk (recession and a slowing economy) at this point.  I’m inclined to agree with good old Bernanke on this one.  Although I’ve been thinking that this was the case over the past several rate cuts that the Federal Reserve has made.

The question that I’m asking at this point however is: is it too little and too late?  I’ll admit that the financial markets have been arduous lately.  I know this more than a lot of people, because I work at a credit union in Phoenix, AZ.  I’ve seen the massive slowdowns and read about the increasing loan delinquencies and writedowns that are taking place.  This with a relatively small (relatively speaking) and very conservative credit union with around $3 billion in assets.  Things must really be difficult for a lot of the larger financial institutions.  It’s obvious they are actually from the constant news of new write-downs.  This so-called recession has even taken from us one of the largest investing companies in the U.S., Bear Stearns.  Things are definitely crazy, but have these huge rate cuts been helping?  Or have they actually been hindering the recovery process?

These Things Take Time

Anyone who’s studied even the most basic of economics knows that market changes don’t happen overnight.  They also don’t happen in a week, or even a month.  Large changes in the financial markets can take months and even years to happen.  Keeping this in mind, one would ask why the Fed cut rates twice to a total of 1.25% percent over a matter of about a week and a half not too long ago?  These things take time, right?  So why so much over such a short amount of time?  I understand their reasoning.  They were hoping to restore confidence to the financial markets… specifically the stock markets.  Something that’s not exactly in their job description.  However I won’t go into that as it’s a completely new topic.  My point in bringing this up is that I’m actually fairly convinced that these large and frequent cuts have done much more harm than good.  All opinions are welcome on the matter, and keep in mind that I am no economist and this is only my opinion.

Have you seen the price of oil lately?  Or the consumer confidence index?  They’re at an all time high and low, respectively speaking.  Obviously there are many factors going into these things, but it’d be foolish to assume or to say that these fed rate cuts have nothing to do with it.  I’m of the opinion that because of the .75% emergency rate cut that the Fed made back in January, followed by the .50% percent cut a week later that consumer confidence was actually hurt.  As a generally uneducated crowd when it comes to finance and the ways of the financial markets we sort of come to expect what’s normal.  What’s normal to us are small and steady rate changes.  .25% here and there up or down are pretty normal in our eyes.  Naturally when we see a much larger change that was initiated by an emergency Fed session we’re going to think something bad is going on.  Self-fulfilling prophesy is a relatively common term that floats around in economics.  In the case of these ridiculously large cuts by Bernanke and company this term might be applied.  As consumers we noticed large emergency cuts and naturally starting to believe that things were much worse than we had previously thought.  Naturally this caused us to become skeptical of the whole situation and we began being more careful with our money.  Self fulfilling prophecy?  I do believe so.

What I’d Like to See

I’d love to see a rate increase in the next few months.  Inflation is going to be a huge problem if the Fed doesn’t do something to try and combat it.  Keeping rates steady will hopefully stop any more increases in the level of inflation, but it’s not going to cut it down.  Not at all.  

I understand the purpose of a savings account completely: they are to be used to put money into and to keep it there.  However it would be an insane idea to think that one would not have the ability to access that money with any level of ease.  The Federal Reserve however seems to think otherwise; convenience to them is not something that we as consumers should be allowed to have when it comes to accessing our money.  Let me explain.

Last month I switched to a new brokerage account and transferred money from my savings to the brokerage account several times.  I also payed off a large credit card bill with money from my savings.  I also miscalculated the amount that I could transfer to my savings from my checking without leaving myself short on cash in the checking account.  I messed up, just a little bit.  I had to transfer money back from my savings to my checking to cover some basic expenses.  Pretty simple mistake to make really… I’m sure just about everyone out there has done that at some point in their life.

The point is that I made several transfers from my savings to my checking account throughout the month of May, as well as a few ACH transfers from my savings to my new brokerage account.  The problem with this is - as some of you may be aware - that the Federal Reserve board has set limitations on the number of transfers you can do OUT of your savings accounts in any given month.  The limit?  Six.  Oops… I went WAY over that.  So at the end of the month I notice a fee in my account for excessive transfers.  There goes my interest for the last five months.  Naturally I called my bank (USAA) to ask them to reverse the fee.  After I asked they offered to reverse half of it, which I gladly accepted.

I decided to do some research after this fiasco to learn more about the Federal Regulation that has caused me so much grief.  It’s called Regulation D and it can be found at the Fed’s Reg D site but so as to alleviate the pain that you would encounter trying to read such legal mumbo-jumbo I will paraphrase the relevant parts of Reg D…. right after I quote directly from it.

the depositor is permitted or authorized to make no more than six transfers and withdrawals, or a combination of such transfers and withdrawals, per calendar month or statement cycle . . . to another account (including a transaction account) of the depositor at the same institution or to a third party by means of a preauthorized or automatic transfer, or telephonic (including data transmission) agreement, order, or instruction, and no more than three of the six such transfers may be made by check, draft, debit card, or similar order made by the depositor and payable to third parties

That part is pretty straightforward.  You (as the depositor) are not authorized to take money out of your savings account more than six times a month (either by withdrawal or transfer) unless you do so at an ATM or at one of your banks branches.

Ok.  I understand the reasoning for the limits on taking money out of a savings account - after all it should not be used like a checking account (in that you take money out of it on a daily basis).  There should not be any reason, however, to limit a person to six or less convenient withdrawals or transfers from their savings account.

We are in a new age today.  We’re more technology savvy than any previous generation has ever been.  We demand convenience.  In the age of internet banking where I can literally do all of my banking without ever leaving my house there should be no reason to limit transfers from a savings account to six.  I understand the limit (a savings after all is not a transaction account), but six is just… not enough.  These limits were set in the 1980s when Reg D was first enacted.  If you ask me it’s more than just a little outdated.  When this was created the internet was hardly even known to be in existence, let alone internet banking.  If you ask me it’s time for a revision.

What do you think?

If you try to keep up on business news like I do, then by now you have read about Intel and their third-quarter record sales. These record sales can be attributed to strong demand for laptop and notebook computers (on a side note, I do wonder how much of this can be attributed to the strong sales of Apple’s Macbook and Macbook Pro line of notebooks). The company reported third-quarter sales of $10.09 billion, which is 15% higher than their third-quarter sales in 2006. Their net income for the quarter was reported as $1.86 billion, which is 43% higher than their third-quarter of 2006 net income of $1.30 billion dollars. Their short-term debt is down from their second-quarter reports, their long-term debt is at about the same level and their cash and cash-equivalents (this means any short-term investments and cash - anything which can be accessed as cash within a years time) are up about $1.8 billion dollars.

It seems that all is well at Intel; profits are up, income is up, debt appears to be decreasing and costs are down when comparing the past three quarters to the same period in 2006. This is fantastic news for Intel when one considers the shocking revelation they received last year; they had their first revenue shortfall in 3 years and were losing market share to their considerably smaller competitor Advanced Micro Devices, otherwise known as AMD. Upon realization of their shortcomings they launched a major restructuring and dropped money-losing businesses, cut 10,000 jobs and pushed new products to the market. At first glance it seems that things are looking up for Intel, in fact one might even say they are going very well. However it seems that there is something they’re not telling us.

The Arizona Republic reported on October 17 that Intel sales hit a third-quarter record. In this same article they reported that Intel announced it would be cutting 2,000 jobs in the fourth quarter of 2007. It should be noted that this is on top of the 10,000 jobs that they have already cut. Nothing seems to add up with this announcement. Their profits are high, their expenses are down and their sales are up, and yet they announce new job cuts? Are they just being greedy and cutting jobs for the sake of further increasing profits and inflating their stock’s value? Is this due to poor management? Playing the devils advocate I’ll ask if maybe these jobs are being cut to make way for new jobs? Or is there something else that we don’t know, something that hasn’t been found on the books and that hasn’t been reported?

What do you think? I’d like to get an active discussion going on this topic if possible, so please leave your comments.