In Context

This Time, Higher Rates Are Boosting Spending and the Economy

US households receive interest income on more than $13 trillion of short-term assets, according to one estimate.
Photographer: Tim Enthoven for Bloomberg Businessweek

Higher interest rates are supposed to slow the economy. What if they’re helping it instead?

The idea is so radical that it borders on heresy. But as the US economy hums along, confounding experts who’d warned of an imminent downturn, more investors are willing to at least entertain the fringe economic model the disciples of Modern Monetary Theory have championed.