What day is the Fed going to announce the interest rate cut?

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Also will this affect mortgages relatively quickly or will it take time to trickle into lending?

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.25 = still optimistic for soft landing .50 = nervous .75 = we fricked up something big

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Do you’re saying markets respond adversely to the cuts? I thought it would be the opposite

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Let’s be clear how the market will react.

.25 = still optimistic for soft landing
.50 = nervous
.75 = we fricked up something big

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You don't cut rates because the economy is good. If you've got growing GDP, you raise rates or keep them steady in order to keep inflation from flaring up. Inflation took off like a rocket because of COVID stimmies, PPPs, commerce shutdowns, etc. This warped the hell out of the normal ebb and flow of the economy's natural boom/bust cycle.

While inflation is coming down (finally), we still have a decently strong GDP. Under normal conditions that might warrant rates staying at their current level a little longer, but we have a massive problem that's been sitting on the sidelines while it continues to grow and grow, and that's that the interest rates just being around the historic norms have vastly increased the carrying cost of the federal debt because the federal debt was so fricking huge already.

Last year we spent just over $1T just to service the national debt. This was the first time ever that servicing costs got close to $1T, much less topped it (the previous year was ~$700B, the year before $500B). And because the federal government never pays the debt down any longer, we're going to see $1T+ servicing costs from here on out, making debt servicing the 2nd most expensive item in the federal budget.

Last year the federal government took in $4.4T in taxes. That means nearly a quarter of tax revenue was set aside just to pay interest in the debt. What does that look like today with the federal government still spending like there's no problem? It looks like an average of $200B-$300B in deficit spending each month thus far this year. 2024 deficit spending was estimated to be $1.8T this year, we're already over $2T and at this rate it may well hit $3T before the year ends.

This is all to say that the further over .25 the Fed lowers rates this week, the bigger a signal it is to the market that they are having to do so much not for a "soft landing", but to try to delay the collapse of the USD under the weight of federal debt since Congress refuses to cut spending enough to at least stop adding to the debt (which would take a cut of around 30% of total spending, which will not happen until we get a crash).

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