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winter_blue10/12/20241 replyview on HN

Is there really that direct of a relationship between hiring and interest rates?


Replies

jmoak10/13/2024

Yes. If the short term rate banks can lend to each other (the fed funds rate set by the central bank) is lower, then all downstream longer term rates / bond yields tend to fall:

https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/

This is simplified, but:

Say you have a billion dollars in cash. With rates at 0% and inflation at 2%, you might as well spend that cash by hiring some engineers and chasing a hit product. Or an OK product.

With rates at 5% or so and 2% inflation you can make decent money keeping your cash in a savings account paying 5% YoY. Unless you're sure you have a good idea, you might as well park the cash and skip out on all of that "hiring engineers" business, which may not result in a good product anyway.