Economy Watch

   The Federal Reserve is taking a wait and see stance after raising interest rates three times last year to stave off inflation and stabilize the economy.
   This could be related to other signs around the world and in America that the economy may be on the verge of a downturn -- not right now in the midst of the holiday buying season, but sometime in the coming year.
   Normally, the Fed raises interest rates when the economy faces a growth rate that is too high, and lowers rates as a way to boost investment and increase growth.
   The U.S. economy has enjoyed continuous growth for the past decade, the longest in its history. But whether that can continue, even as other nations edge closer to the brink of recession, is cause for concern among economists in the private sector and likely also at the Fed.
   The agency's target rate for healthy and stable GDP growth is about 2 percent yearly, but pressure from the White House for a 3 percent growth rate or higher has been ignored by the Fed, which is fully independent.
   All this while the nation is focused on impeachment proceedings in Washington that would, if successful, oust the president from office and prohibit him from ever having any other office of public trust.
   Democrats have presented factual information accusing the president of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and therefore should be impeached and removed from office. Republican supporters, however, dismiss such information -- true or not -- as irrelevant, and instead they attack the process.
   Meanwhile, the possibility of an economic downturn looms and may hit the nation in the spring or summer, at the height of the election season, and perhaps even at the same time as a presidential impeachment trial in the Senate.
   The House of Representatives is about to approve impeachment articles, and the issue then will go to the Senate for trial. But the Senate is not likely to start that until after the holiday season.
   So the nation is facing the possibility of an impeachment trial and an economic downturn at the same time.
   Meanwhile, the Fed is always careful in the phrasing of its announcements, lest its warnings of a possible downturn become a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing the very thing it wants to prevent.
   That's why many of its statements seem vague to the point of being incomprehensible. Perhaps that's just as well, since its job is to monitor and try to guide the nation's economy, not to control it fully.