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U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

wsj.com

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#31
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volcker was appointed by Carter, not Reagan.

He was first appointed to the treasury by Nixon in ‘73 and was instrumental in ending the gold standard. Then appointed by Carter in ‘79 to the Federal Reserve. But most of his interest rate tightening happened under Reagan with a peak tightening in ‘81 with fed funds rate at 20%.

That was how stagflation was ended. Its probably what is needed this time around.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#32
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reagan stacked the Fed with loyalists and forced Volcker to resign.

How does the President “force” someone to resign when they are in charge of selecting the person for that role?

The Fed Chair cannot be removed by the President once installed. He was pressured by other means.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#33
post #3

Anyone have opinions on how long this inflation spike will last, or what the peak will be? I seriously thought we had maybe peaked earlier this year, and it looks like the peak so far was in March for core inflation excluding food and energy. However, maybe high energy prices will feed back into other consumer prices eventually, triggering more inflation. The producer price index (PPI) is still really wild, so maybe…

>Anyone have opinions on how long this inflation spike will last, or what the peak will be?

Sorry, Mr. Biden. You'll have to look elsewhere for economics advice.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#36
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't raise interest rates quickly because it would nuke the easy-money economy (i.e. the entire economy) that has become addicted to low rates. They have to slowly raise them to keep stuff from falling apart. The ruling party also doesn't want to get hurt worse than they already are, and a stagflation recession would clobber them. So easy money and high inflation will remain for at least another year.

> They can't raise interest rates quickly because it would nuke the easy-money economy (i.e. the entire economy) that has become addicted to low rates. This is exactly why the easy-money economy should never have been allowed to occur and persist for so long.

It's been the entire basis for the _MASSIVE_ explosion in VC investors and tech investment though. Without it way, way fewer people would be here and we'd all be making way, way less money. So, it's kind of a double-edged sword.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#37
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The amazing things is many were predicting this back in 2008." Inflation was at historic lows from 2008 to 2020. I guess an economist can be wrong for over a decade and still be "pretty accurate so far" in your mind.

Thanks for clearly ignoring 90% of my comment. By “predicting this in 2008” they predicted a long period of low inflation before it started to accelerate quickly. I’d say that’s pretty damn accurate.

Please show a quote where he predicts a "long period of low inflation".

The transcript feature on that site states

"Why are interest rates currently so low? Shouldn't they be higher, reflecting expected inflation? Because people all over the world are fearful. But they've moved up quite a bit in the last month"

So he's saying inflation hadn't hit yet in 2009 but when the fear goes away they would. He's also implying inflation is beginning in 2009 since they "moved up quite a bit"

That doesn't sound like a 10 year low inflation prediction. It also doesn't sound like what happened over the last decade.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And more gasoline is produced.

Everyone likes to blame the Russia-Ukraine conflict but inflation was spiking prior to supply issues. That war is a convenient scapegoat for politicians and bureaucrats who don’t want to take credit for profligate spending and loose policy for decades.

This is a nitpick, but profligate spending cannot create inflation. If I have a million dollars, and I spend a million dollars, that doesn't create inflation. Even if I spent the million dollars on stupid NFT cat gifs. I got the money from somewhere and I spent it, and sent it back out. No net inflation.

The inflation comes from the printing and spending of new money.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And more gasoline is produced.

Everyone likes to blame the Russia-Ukraine conflict but inflation was spiking prior to supply issues. That war is a convenient scapegoat for politicians and bureaucrats who don’t want to take credit for profligate spending and loose policy for decades.

"for decades"

I think this is important. Dumb political finger pointing is meaningless here. This issue has nothing to do with Democrats, or Republicans, or liberals, or conservatives, or this administration, or the previous one, or the previous six.

Re: U.S. inflation reached a new four-decade high of 8.6% in May

#40
post #3

Anyone have opinions on how long this inflation spike will last, or what the peak will be? I seriously thought we had maybe peaked earlier this year, and it looks like the peak so far was in March for core inflation excluding food and energy. However, maybe high energy prices will feed back into other consumer prices eventually, triggering more inflation. The producer price index (PPI) is still really wild, so maybe…

it will last much longer and will get worse, because everything is dependent on energy to be created/transported. There's also the fact that many retailers admitted to eating losses to try and keep customers happy assuming that inflation would be "transitory", pretty soon many of these retailers will be forced to raise prices to reflect reality

I'm not sure that's right. Let's say energy (specifically oil and gas) is driving this. And so everything goes up, because everything depends on oil and gas. But there it stops, because the price of oil and gas isn't going to go up because of inflation in, say, wheat or Nikes. Oil and gas are going up primarily because of the loss of supply from Russia.
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