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Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields

reuters.com

251–252 of 252 posts

Re: Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing only one flavor of inflation. What the Fed is supposed to care about is price stability, and lots of things influence prices, and not all of them are money supply and/or new money supply correspondent. We saw this during COVID, the prices of things shot through the roof because of a combination of supply-chain shocks as well as the already well capitalized seizing the opportunity to spend their war…

Inflation isn't like ice cream that comes in assorted flavors. It's a simple ratio (hard to measure in practice, but still conceptually simple). If one side of a ratio is fluctuating (for whatever reason) the ratio's value can be stabilized by making corresponding adjustments to the other side. Amount of goods drops 10%? Reduce the money supply by 10%, bam!, no inflation. There may be all sorts of policy or political…

Agreed. The argument the person you're responding to should be making is 'Tightening monetary policy will bring down inflation but may cause severe negative side effects if the original cause of that inflation isn't monetary.'

That's something that's interesting to debate. Especially given recent experience on the opposite side when loosened COVID monetary supply in response to supply limitation boomeranged into inflation by turbocharging demand.

Ultimately though, tighter monetary policy will (full stop, no if's) act as a brake on inflation, explicitly because it will reduce aggregate demand. Less money to chase goods => some demanders stop trying => lower prices.

That 'demanders stopping' is often also an economic slowdown is a different issue.

Re: Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It is a tax. He raised a tax. You might argue it is inflationary.

By that logic, interest rate hikes should be inflationary. It is highly unusual to argue that taxation is inflationary since the whole point of inflation is to reduce demand.

The whole point of inflation is to reduce demand? Please further explain, including your ideas about causes and effects.
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