Beginning in March 2022, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates a total of 11 times in an effort to curb high inflation, rapidly raising the benchmark interest rate to the current 5 in more than a year..25% -5.50% level, can be described as quite radical。It stands to reason that an increase in a country's benchmark interest rate will lead to less liquidity in the market, more difficult for financial institutions to access funds, and a slow cooling of the economy.。Looking at it this way, it's only natural that Americans' lives should be turned upside down during such an aggressive rate hike cycle, but according to a recent survey, it doesn't seem like their lives have been greatly affected.？The answer to this question has to do with how the interest rate on the loan is settled.。Generally speaking, there are two ways to settle the interest rate of loans, one is the fixed interest rate system, in this model, consumers can lock in the interest rate of their own loans, no matter how the external environment changes, the level of consumer debt is relatively fixed, almost unaffected;The other is a floating rate system, in which the level of consumer debt correlates to the level of macro interest rates because floating rate debt resets periodically as the benchmark rate rises。In other words, the main impact of the Fed's rate hike is on consumers who adopt a floating rate system, while the impact on fixed-rate loans is relatively limited。Because, from 2008 until last year, the Fed has kept policy rates at historically low levels, so the big smart people in this period have prioritized a fixed exchange rate system.。This allows them to lock in interest rates on consumer loans at low levels first, which can effectively reduce the impact of changes in the external environment。According to Moody's Deputy Chief Economist Cristian deRitis, most consumer debt among U.S. households is fixed-rate, with nearly 70 percent of them having mortgage rates below 4 percent.。