If everyone is too clever who wins?

Quaking with uncertainty and swallowing hard the US Federal Reserve raised interest rate by a timid 25 basis points, while repeatedly reassuring the world that the next hike, if it comes, is in the distant future. There has been enormous anticipation of when the Fed will raise rates with detailed analysis of how that will affect the global economy. As it happens there has been no reaction. Stock markets actually went up. So why bore us to death? Because low interest rates help the rich and the rich control the media. The rich have collateral and so can borrow at very low rates with which to buy assets, such as real estate and stocks, while those lower down the ladder get no returns from their savings. As cost of real estate rises the poor pay more in rent, which is a total waste, to those who own properties. This has given rise to a heated debate about how inequality is rising as wages have stayed stagnant, as productivity has risen sharply, while the rich have gained from non-productive financial markets. The top 1% already owns 48% of global wealth and another 5% owns 46% of the remaining 52%. To be fair, the strength of the dollar acts as a rise in interest rate by restraining inflation, because imports become cheaper, while exports become more expensive. If low interest rate helps the rich why did Joseph Stiglitz, certainly no right wing, write so strongly against raising rate? He says that keeping rate low will increase employment as people spend more on borrowed money, encouraging businesses to expand capacity on cheap credit. A tight labor market will raise wages and improve living standards. Stiglitz feels that an arbitrary upper limit of 2% on inflation should be abandoned and financial speculation should be curbed, but he does not say how. Global growth since the financial crisis of 2008 has been fueled by easy borrowing. Companies in emerging markets have borrowed $24 trillion and will have to more in interest. The rising dollar will also make the debt more expensive. Countries which depend on exporting commodities, such as Brazil, Russia and South Africa, will be very hard hit. And then there is China. In August China devalued its currency, the renminbi, by 2% but has been selling dollar securities ever since, to stem its fall. This had the effect of raising bond yields in the US and stopped the Fed from raising rate in September. This time the People's Bank of China announced an end to its dollar peg and moved to an exchange rate against a basket of currencies. This is apparently to depreciate the renminbi without revealing the extent to which it is falling so as to avert a currency war with other Asian countries, who will devalue their currencies to protect their economies against a flood of Chinese imports. Are the Chinese being too clever? Maybe they are not as inscrutable as they think they are.