Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus • Hacker News Board

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#271

Post by OCASM » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #231

bluedevil2k wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a point, you have an opinion. You don't provide any facts or resources that prove the money spent in a fiscal stimulus returns a greater rate than the interest on it. You don't address the fact that the debt has gone up 300% over the last 20 years while the GDP is up only an average of 2.5% a year. Printing your way out of debt is not a solution, ask Argentina. Eventually your investors will lose faith…

> You don't provide any facts or resources that prove the money spent in a fiscal stimulus returns a greater rate than the interest on it. 1. I never said fiscal stimulus was guaranteed to return more than the interest to service the debt needed to pay for it. I said if it does that . My point is deficit spending == bad is not always true. 2. You didn't provide any facts or resources to prove that there exists no pos…

Inflation is not as bad in the US as it is in Argentina because the demand of US dollars is still high. When that changes you can say good bye to a nice, stable inflation rate.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#272

Post by Acrobatic_Road » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #202

wyxuan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capita is decreasing thanks to demographic trends, and gdp had flat lined

The US is also moving into a demographic downturn, thanks to republican policies.

Not really. The entire first world is suffering a demographic crisis but the US is doing slightly better than Europe and Japan with population set to keep increasing for the foreseeable future.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#273

Post by Der_Einzige » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

bluedevil2k wrote: post #168

learc83 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you managed to both completely avoid my point and bring up generational politics.

You don't have a point, you have an opinion. You don't provide any facts or resources that prove the money spent in a fiscal stimulus returns a greater rate than the interest on it. You don't address the fact that the debt has gone up 300% over the last 20 years while the GDP is up only an average of 2.5% a year. Printing your way out of debt is not a solution, ask Argentina. Eventually your investors will lose faith…

Us GDP to debt ratio is not dramatically worse compared to where it was 30-50 years ago if you just look at how other countries were during this period

Boomers are the ones who tell you to be scared of the debt. Same boomers tell me that gold is the best investment

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#274

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

indigo945 wrote: post #242

lotsofpulp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what is it when everyone owns them (in varying ownership percentages of course) via index ETFs?

Marx was wrong not about if, but about how the workers would take control of the means of production!

That's the beauty of it, since the workers still don't control the means of production. But they do depend on the valuation of their "portfolios", so they're invested in the continued existence of the system, and they're pitted against each other as they are both labor and owners. But not enough owners to matter.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#275

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #133

rsync wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ... I'm still slightly bearish on the whole situation due to the combination of the virus' absurdly high infection rate[0] and its ridiculous ~25-30 day incubation period ..." You're right to highlight those aspects of the virus and I find them noteworthy as well. However, the statistics I am most interested in is mortality rate and rate of asymptomatic infections. I note with interest that among the 700+ infected…

According to my fancy math based on numbers from Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard[0][1], we're closer to a 7% mortality rate [0] direct link: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594... [1] posted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475060

First, you are conflating mortality rate with case fatality rate (CFR). Mortality rate is deaths with respect to a total population; CFR is deaths with respect to diagnosed cases.

Second, since this is an ongoing outbreak the CFR is a moving target. Your calculation assumes the ratio of deaths to recoveries remains what it is now for the ~40k active cases. However, the CFR by that calculation has been steadily falling. Additionally, since CFR is only based on diagnosed cases the struggles with testing capacity, particularly in the US, will distort it by biasing diagnoses towards more severe cases.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#276

Post by OCASM » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

RobertoG wrote: post #243

bluedevil2k wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a point, you have an opinion. You don't provide any facts or resources that prove the money spent in a fiscal stimulus returns a greater rate than the interest on it. You don't address the fact that the debt has gone up 300% over the last 20 years while the GDP is up only an average of 2.5% a year. Printing your way out of debt is not a solution, ask Argentina. Eventually your investors will lose faith…

I think Argentina problems come from borrowing in dollars, not from "printing" his own currency.

Inflation is their favorite tool to steal from the people. It's even illegal to purchase a high amount of US dollars now.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#277

Post by InterestBazinga » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

rolltiide wrote: post #259

ajphdiv wrote: post #192

I had some call options on Robinhood that I wanted to sell after the spike caused by this rate hike. Now I'm watching my gains slowly go away since Robinhood is down again. Two days in a row.

and what lesson have you learned?

Trust an exchange with a Fancy UI.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#278

Post by Erlich_Bachman » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

codelitt wrote: post #234

aazaa wrote: post #51

For those saying the Fed is running out of ammunition, study what the Bank of Japan has done. It owns close to 80% of the Japanese ETF market currently, with no end to the expansion of balance sheet in sight. After buying long treasuries, it's not unreasonable to imagine the Fed buying stocks, either individual issues or ETFs. The President would be for it, and it would be hard to drum up any opposition to it in cong…

God help us all if our central bank starts taking cues from the Bank of Japan or the ECB and their zombie economies. Our inability to suffer short-term consequences for long-term prosperity is a real issue that we as a country need to figure out how to solve. (Can you solve for human nature?) The fed shouldn't have made cuts in 2019 at the height of the market, we should have let failing banks fail, we need to start…

Yes, but God has been helping us all already and it has been going on for decades, through QE and interest rates and bailouts, and a lot of top economists seem to be set on milking this as long as they can and keeping the cow on life support and drugs for a very very long time. And why shouldn't they? Nobody knows how long we can keep the cow alive, there is no real precedent. It can go belly up tomorrow or in 50 years. It works really well right up until the point where it doesn't at all anymore.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#279

Post by SilasX » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

seirl wrote: post #206

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed's job is supposed to be to keep inflation stable. Inflation is as stable as it's ever been. If stock prices go down, that means nothing to inflation. Somehow, since Greenspan, the Fed's job evolved to include pumping up asset prices to benefit asset owners (the top 5% own 80% of assets).

Wrong. The Fed has a dual mandate, they have to keep inflation and unemployment stable. Recessions are bad for employment, it turns out.

You could have a stock market crash while hitting full employment, for any number of reasons e.g. non-listed companies expand while listed contract; families scale down and take earners off the market; war mobilization that involves long-term high taxes; and probably all kinds of scenarios I'm not thinking of. "Stopping recessions" is not an automatic justification for propping up asset prices.

Re: Fed cuts half point in emergency move amid spreading virus

#280

Post by QuesnayJr » Tue, Mar 03, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #153

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fiscal policy can't really affect the real economy Fiscal policy ( e.g. the government buying tanks) absolutely affects the real economy. The central bank doesn't control fiscal policy. It controls monetary policy. Monetary policy also affects the real economy, just indirectly.

Monetary policy is about increasing or decreasing the money supply. The argument is that it cannot have long-term real effects because if it did we would all be incredibly rich, since it costs nothing to increase the money supply by whatever amount. Every underdeveloped nation would simply increase their money supply and poverty would be a thing of the past.

It has real effects until the economy is at full employment, after which it only causes inflation.