Trucking and other businesses in the mature sectors of the economy will sneeze first if there is an interest rate “flu” brought on after the May 16 meeting of the Federal Reserve.
If they act as expected, the 12 members of the central bank’s powerful Federal Open Market Committee, whose chairman is Alan Greenspan, will puff up short-term interest rates by at least one-quarter of a percentage point.
The main short-term interest rate the central bank addresses is the Fed Funds rate, currently at 6%.
The gloom-and-doom version of events is that old sectors of the economy, including trucking, will play the whipping boy for high-tech firms. Greenspan’s famous “irrational exuberance” observations about the economy were based in part on soaring prices for high-tech stocks.
For the full story, see the May 15 print edition of Transport Topics. .
