Howard Pyle, The Burning of Jamestown, an early-twentieth-century illustration, not an eyewitness view. Public domain.
In 2022 the Federal Reserve started a hiking cycle, lifting its policy rate off the pandemic floor in sharp steps.
If money is tight, the card you revolve gets more expensive first.
If you are in the middle, a car loan or a new mortgage is repriced before your wage is.
If you have savings, cash starts to pay again, and the assets bought with cheap money get revalued.
The Federal Reserve began raising the federal funds rate in March 2022 from the near-zero range of the pandemic.
The increases kept coming, large ones among them, through 2022 and into the next year.
The aim was to cool spending so that the inflation of 2021 and 2022 would not become the new habit.
Source: Federal Reserve, hiking cycle begun in 2022.