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It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

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261–270 of 478 posts

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#261
post #197
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bond rates move inversely to price. As the fed buys bonds, it raises the price which lowers the rate. As rates are lowered for things like mortgages and corporate bonds, people and corporations have more money to spend. Which they do generally spend which stimulates the economy. Lower rates also cause corporations and people to borrow more which in a fractional reserve banking system actually creates money out of thi…

Not everyone is a homeowner and on top of that not every homeowner has refinanced their home during covid. I don't think people are borrowing money to buy toilet paper or a golf club. How do lower rates for corporate loans affect behavior that's at the consumer level? I'm trying to understand this relationship better.

It doesn't directly go from fed to toilet paper. It starts with fed, inflates assets like real estate, stocks, commodities and leaks into actual economy due to the expected returns on these assets. For example, rents, prices of hardware and capital intensive sectors, oil all go up because on one hand these are getting indirectly pumped up by suppressed yields on bonds thanks to fed while on the other hand they are also getting consumed by economy (industry/people) which has to pay more to match the appreciation in prices to use/consume them.

All this results in higher wage expectations due to people expecting higher wages based on higher prices (gasoline, cars etc) which moves the fed money to people's hands and increases the prices of consumer goods including fmcg like TP.

As you can see there is a long link from cause to effect which is why we are seeing the slow increase in inflation. In many sectors like agriculture this is not even priced in yet as they are ultra competitive. But as their inputs go up (people and raw materials, hardware ), they will also have to increase prices.

Even when eventually fed raises rates or tapers their buying, prices once gone up have a way of sticking around unless efficiency improvements like automation reduce input costs.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#262
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural gas extremely expensive? Let me introduce you to renewables, which btw are getting better and better every year. Shutting down a natural gas pipeline that people depend upon just before winter, and then lecturing them about solar panels is not a good look. Artificially increasing the price of natural gas causes famines, it causes food and fertilizer to be more expensive, and it makes it hard for people to h…

I sympathize with this, but if climate experts are to believed, we’ve stalled to the point where we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control in order to meet targets, and most countries haven’t even begun to make significant changes. At some point there will be pain. The question is, “do we want a little pain now or a lot of pain down the road?”. And to be clear, “wearing a coat inside during winter” may…

"we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control"

Every year we're told it's our absolute last chance. Environmental brinkmanship hasn't work and the tune needs to be changed. Literally no economies are planning for mass famine or wars because no-one actually believes that is going to happen, except religious cults.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a parallel effect of QE that no-one really wrote about: it causes a shortage of risk-free assets, and makes it harder for savers to fund liabilities. I can believe that QE had a positive portfolio effect in the early 2010s. But no-one really acknowledged the downsides (it took them most of the 2010s to work out why QE "worked"). So we have the amazing situation where you will get funding for a proje…

I don't think it's that Jerome Powell doesn't understand. Rather the central bank only has a few tools (interest rates/QE) to nudge the economy in the right direction. It takes real policy (Congress and the White House) to direct the investment to the more sustainable long-term investments

Here is the problem: if Powell is too successful with monetary tools, what incentive does it leave the policy side to do anything at all? He isn't powerless to force policy action by holding the line, but understandably he's more interested in keeping his job.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with this, but if climate experts are to believed, we’ve stalled to the point where we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control in order to meet targets, and most countries haven’t even begun to make significant changes. At some point there will be pain. The question is, “do we want a little pain now or a lot of pain down the road?”. And to be clear, “wearing a coat inside during winter” may…

Why in the hell would you believe climate experts? The entire argument is poorly done forecasting for a system we don’t understand. The claims are unfalsifiable. It has all of the hallmarks of a scientific fad. When once again the modeling is inaccurate and the claims about temperature change impacts aren’t realized, this will be used as _more proof_.

>Why in the hell would you believe climate experts?

a) because we don't have a spare planet, and

b) we kind of like our children.

Like Russian roulette, its the risk of being wrong that changes the decision making paradigm from the one you use for 'should I buy bitcoin'.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#265
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the macro economic sense, fiat money isn't 'used up' or 'locked away' when you buy something like crypto, it's transferred from your account to someone else's bank account. Worse, it goes through the process of fractional reserve banking and multiplies about ~10x after changing hands repeatedly.

The trickiest question in business that noone seems to get right: Q: How much money flows into "X" market? A: None, money flows THROUGH markets.

Not sure about that. Money velocity went down a lot. If you pay Apple money, Apple – the company – keeps that money as cash reserves in some form or another. This might be reinvested and circulates a bit more, but is it really spend in the real economy so that average Joe benefits from this?

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the hell would you believe climate experts? The entire argument is poorly done forecasting for a system we don’t understand. The claims are unfalsifiable. It has all of the hallmarks of a scientific fad. When once again the modeling is inaccurate and the claims about temperature change impacts aren’t realized, this will be used as _more proof_.

>Why in the hell would you believe climate experts? a) because we don't have a spare planet, and b) we kind of like our children. Like Russian roulette, its the risk of being wrong that changes the decision making paradigm from the one you use for 'should I buy bitcoin'.

Your mistake is weighing superstition vs tangible harm. Eliminating fossil fuels will condemn large swathes of the living population to true poverty and kill many more. How do you think things like hospitals in the developing world run? And the infrastructure that lets them be created to begin with?

The idea that we should eliminate fossil fuels is truly a privileged take.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#267
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they deal with insurance? I'm not sure I'd feel very comfortable trusting a random stranger to use my car for 5 days, unless I was sure I'd be paid out in full (or more) if they were to damage or total the vehicle.

Most companies like Airbnb, Turo, Boatsetter (airbnb for boats) offer some insurance they negotiate with an underwriter like Geico. Getting this sort of insurance individually is much more costly or next to impossible, which is why we don't see people short-term renting expensive assets to each other on Craigslist. I imagine negotiating the ability to dole out these sorts of policies at scale with Lloyd's of London o…

Isn't the crux of insuring anything 'doing it at scale'?

If you are AirBNB, why would you need an insurer at all?

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#268
post #209
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural gas extremely expensive? Let me introduce you to renewables, which btw are getting better and better every year. Shutting down a natural gas pipeline that people depend upon just before winter, and then lecturing them about solar panels is not a good look. Artificially increasing the price of natural gas causes famines, it causes food and fertilizer to be more expensive, and it makes it hard for people to h…

Woah, what are you honestly on about? You can claim that the US is artificially raising natural gas prices, but the exact opposite is true. By chance of circumstance, we've historically underbuilt LNG processing facilities and that is isolating the US market from the rest of the world, so we have some of the lowest natural gas prices in the world right now. Please take your uninformed takes and cringey political rall…

I feel like you are being unnecessarily confrontational over a difference of opinion.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#270
post #269

I stil don't get it - what is different now compared to 2019 that we have a labour shortage?

I don't know about you, but I've managed to save 2 to 3 times as much of my income compared to before the pandemic started. I must not be alone. In most countries, those most affected by the shutdowns (restaurants and the likes) got government help. All in all, there's gotta be lot of disposable income, thus people are trying to spend it.
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