Today, the Federal Reserve announced that it was raising interest rates for the first time since 2006. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, was not happy with the decision.
In a statement, Sanders, a democratic-socialist who has in the past run as an independent, issued the following statement on his Senate website:
When millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates is bad news for working families. At a time when real unemployment is nearly 10 percent and youth unemployment is off the charts, we need to do everything possible to create millions of good-paying jobs and raise the wages of the American people. The Fed should act with the same sense of urgency to rebuild the disappearing middle class as it did to bail out Wall Street banks seven years ago.
This isn’t the first time Sanders has talked about interest rates. In September he put out a statement saying essentially the same thing when the Fed did not adjust interest rates.
Sanders stance on the issue is in keeping with his campaign theme, which is to do anything to help the middle class, oftentimes at the expense of financial institutions.