By Taylor Williams After eight interest rate hikes totaling 450 basis points over the last 10 months, courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s war on inflation, commercial borrowers can only hope that the fundamental law of gravity — “what goes up must come down” — will start to become reality in 2023. But the economic clarity that the commercial lending community seeks is muddied by conflicting agendas. On the one hand, the nation’s central bank has made some headway in taming inflation through the rate hikes. The Consumer Price Index fell from an annual rate of 9.1 percent in June 2022 to 6.5 percent in December, but is still well above the Fed’s 2 percent target rate. On the other hand, expansionary fiscal policy such as the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill signed into law in late 2021 and the $1.7 trillion omnibus appropriations bill passed in December 2022 could undermine the Fed’s efforts to curb inflation, say some economists. The U.S. national debt stood at a record $31.5 trillion as of press time due to the cumulative effect of recessions, wars, tax cuts, the COVID-19 pandemic, and excessive government spending. The ratio of U.S. federal debt to GDP as of press …
