June 29, 2006. Nine-and-a-half years. That’s how long it has been since the Federal Reserve last raised interest rates.
Fed chief Janet Yellen was the head of the San Francisco Fed back then.
She is one of just two Fed members who were on the central bank’s monetary policy committee in June 2006 that will be voting whether or not to hike rates on Wednesday. The other Is Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker.
Current Fed vice chair Stanley Fischer was in the middle of his second year as a governor of The Bank of Israel back in June 2006. New York Fed president Bill Dudley was still working for Goldman Sachs.
But to truly appreciate just how much time has passed since the Fed started tightening, let’s take a little stroll down memory lane.
Taylor ruled the pop charts
The number one song on June 29, 2006 according to Billboard was “Do I Make You Proud” by Taylor … Hicks.
Taylor Who? You mean you don’t remember the silver-haired “American Idol” winner? Soul Patrol? Take a listen.
For what it’s worth, the then 16-year old Taylor Swift was just about to take the country music world by storm. Her first single, “Tim McGraw” hit the radio just a few weeks before the Fed meeting and her debut album came out in October.
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Frank Underwood!
Ben Bernanke was still a few years away from being compared to the Man in Steel for helping save the economy during the Great Recession.
But in June 2006, Clark Kent ruled the box office. Briefly.
“Superman Returns” was the number one movie. For a whole week.
Looking back, the movie is mostly remembered for being pretty meh. It was the only time that Brandon Routh wound up donning the cape, blue tights and red boots. Kate Bosworth was widely panned for her performance as Lois Lane.
But Kevin Spacey got to ham it up as Lex Luthor, a nice preview of the villain he’d become on “House of Cards.”
And how’s this for a meta fact? In the 2007 movie “Fred Claus,” Spacey’s character gets a Superman cape from St. Nick — played by Paul Giamatti, who later portrayed Bernanke in the TV movie “Too Big To Fail.” Freaky!
Still, Superman (like Fed rate hikes) can only be kept down for so long. CNN parent Time Warner rebooted the franchise yet again in 2013 and Superman is set to battle Batman next year in a movie fittingly called “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
Vote for Pedro? Not so much
Pedro Martinez got into Cooperstown this summer, mainly due to his success in his seven years pitching for the Boston Red Sox. But Martinez didn’t have his Hall of Fame stuff the night before the Fed raised rates.
Pitching in Boston … but for the New York Mets … Martinez gave up seven hits and six earned runs in just three innings.
It was his first time back at Fenway since he left the Red Sox following the 2005 season. This jumpy, Zapruder-esque video shows the ovation he got from Sawx fans just before he gave up his first hit.
Martinez went on the disabled list soon after this game. But the Mets actually won their division in 2006 — just like this year.
So does this mean that after Wednesday, the Fed won’t raise rates again until 2024? And that perpetually downtrodden Mets fans will suffer for nearly a decade before making a postseason return?
Google checks out and more fun facts
Some other interesting tidbits from the land of rate hikes that time forgot.
Apple was only worth about $65 billion, a tenth of its current market value. The first iPhone was still a year away from being introduced.
On June 28, 2006 Google launched Checkout, an online payment processing service some thought would be a formidable rival to PayPal. Google killed off Checkout in November 2013.
A week before the Fed rate hike, the Miami Heat won their first NBA title, defeating Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks.
A certain microblogging service with a little blue bird as a logo hadn’t yet opened its service to the general public. That happened in July 2006. So Cuban was unable to tweet his complaints about the refs.
And earlier on in June 2006, some guy named Sean Yazbeck won the fifth season of a reality show called “The Apprentice.”
I’m not sure what happened to the host.
