Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

To flesh out my question a little further, let's say that the fed decides one day to change the fed funds rate from 1.75% to 2%. They put the bonds up for auction and find out that they were only able to auction off the allotment of bonds at an effective rate of 1.8%. Is this typical? Or is it usually the case that the bond buyers will quickly hoover up whatever rate they are given?

Maybe a more formal way to put it- is the elasticity of demand for these bonds low enough for the fed to have complete control over the fed funds rate such that they can set any interest rate they desire?

Beating the other team in the short term is seen as more important than the long term health of the nation. You can see this play out in the tax cut, deficit spending and many other examples.

> Who cares if the world explodes in 6 years? I need to be reelected in 2.

Market slowdown, you'll want your bonds.

Recession, you'll want your cash.

Depression, you'll want gold and barterable goods.

Economic collapse or apocalypse, you'll want food, medicine, and alcohol (possibly the most barterable good, also delicious).

In any case anybody reading this in a major city faces non zero likelihood of disaster (take your pick for your city, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, terrorist attack, war) and should be stockpiling 3 liters of water per person in the house per day you want to be able to survive on your own, alongside 2k calories of food, trash bags, etc. I say have a stocked liquor cabinet as well because my experience in Backcountry many week hikes has taught me you can get nearly anything in return for good liquor :)

I've also heard strong arguments for the stockpiling of pornography and certain chemicals that are valuable in tbe production of medicine or just used as general reagents, don't know too much about chemical stockpiling though.

Careful for the prepper rabbit hole, it runs so very deep ;)