2025, Feb 8 - Feb 14

Federal Reserve’s Jerome Powell states that we are in “no hurry” to lower interest rates. Americans were hoping for the opposite: they wanted it lowered, faster. “The economy is strong overall and has made significant progress toward our goals over the past two years,” Powell states on Tuesday. He disagrees with the public and wants to see how the labor market and inflation play out before making any serious changes. On Wednesday, the CPI(Consumer Price Index) exposed last month’s higher than expected rates, rising 0.5% to 3%. Now, back to FED chair Powell, these prices scare markets because of the fear of FED fund rates and less spending, while inflation continuously goes up. Under lots of pressure, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren urges Powell to “move more rapidly” and cut rates. President Trump has been conflicting with FED, since his first meeting and calls to lower borrowing costs. However, Powell responds that his comments will not affect interest rates as far as he is in control. To make matters worse, the PPI(Producer Price Index) seems to be exactly in line with the CPI rating, which essentially tells us that inflation is going up. This creates an even bigger barrier for the FED to cut rates. Soon after Trump's conversation with Russian President Putin on ending the Russian-Ukrainian War immediately, the market has seen a bit of a recovery.

Although this looked good for American markets, just hours later, the White House stated that the President will meet up with Indian Prime Minister Nerendra Modi, and potentially other world leaders to discuss even more tariffs. Trump is now essentially trying to impose taxes on every country with US import duties, which does not make the FED fund rate situation any better. "They do piss off allies... They're confusing and stuff like that, (but) they can have negative consequences." said JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon. According to The Guardian, “Trump thinks antagonising China will help save the US economy. He couldn’t be more wrong.” The USD is sent to circulate by importing more than exporting, which gives the impression of a trade imbalance given the status of the US economy. This is called a trade deficit. Luckily enough, the tariffs signing did not disturb the market as much as investors feared.

On Thursday, 14 states filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, claiming that the White House's offer of power to the tech tycoon and his advisory organization, Department of Government Efficiency, is unconstitutional. The two are particularly in a hurry to eliminate as many US agencies because as a “special government employee” which is a classification(not a title) for DOGE, only 130 working days a year are promoted. January’s job report was released last week of 143,000 new jobs, falling short of expectations. Protests further continue to call for Musk to get fired from the government position. As mentioned, DOGE theoretically does a great job of cutting down operation costs, possibly beneficial to the economy. Income taxes could be reduced or even get outlawed, promised by Trump. However, Americans don’t see the potential for quite a bold idea. Skepticism around the current administration segues into a panicking Wall Street with massive sell offs and FUD over tech companies, especially AI.

DOW held on to the 45,500 mark and went up by 151.24 points and NASDAQ went up 358.82 points to around 20,800. Crypto market is currently seeing more bears than bulls and BTC stays below $100,000, ending the week off with a mere $97,000. The Altcoin market still does not look so great, with more fear around the President’s lack of acknowledgement but seems to go through a slight recovery phase. ETH is up 2.84%.