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Statement from Jerome Powell

federalreserve.gov

431–440 of 871 posts

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also for very stupid reasons: The fed dropping rates to the degree that would satisfy Donald Trump would greatly accelerate inflation which in turn would further upset voters, who would in turn blame Donald Trump (just like they did Biden before).

blame Donald Trump (just like they did Biden before) Respectfully disagree. Republican presidents get a lot more economic leeway than Dem presidents, especially from the media. This has puzzled me my entire adult life. Inflation will bother media and public, but not to the same extent it did 2021-22.

> This has puzzled me my entire adult life.

Big media works for the capital class, community newspapers and other forms of local news that are largely pro-public have been gutted. The remaining large-ish public media orgs (PBS, NPR) are currently under attack to consolidate corporate-friendly agenda-setting.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit. If you believe even a small minority actually want that, please unplug and talk to real people in meat space.

Fox News, a major American media company, had one of their main personalities say that homeless people should just be killed by lethal injection on air. The desire for killing for random reasons is so mainstream to them that their media is comfortable stating out loud people they don't want/are undesirable should just be killed. Their media organs are workshopping/normalizing killing undesirables. https://www.youtube…

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Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how the stock market would look if AI wasn't such a big driving factor. Or how it would look if there was no sledge hammer. Insane times.

My working theory is that the ai bubble is caused by trump. People are too uncertain to want to invest in most industries, but they have to put their money somewhere, so they put it in ai stocks. Since the supreme court is likely to rule trump's tariffs illegal in a week or so, this may lead to a stock market crash. As people reallocate their portfolios, they will sell their ai stocks, which will pop the bubble and c…

Valid theory, and if you look at the prices of assets like gold, the reallocation is already happening. But I feel a near-term crash in AI stocks is just not coming unless we are headed towards catastrophic economic conditions. Lots of market forces are involved in AI now and even people selling stocks (or a major correction) will not pop the AI bubble since the major players have invested way too much cash to just let it go away at this point. (IMO)

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#435
post #54

So I'm sitting here as a Canadian wondering what the American people are going to do? I understand a lot of what the President of The United States says - I even agree with some of it, the problem is I don't feel like we're engaging with the American people anymore. I really wonder where you guys are headed and what it means for the rest of us, I spent 15 years in the states, built a public company there, I really li…

> I wonder where you guys are headed. You need to know only two facts about America to guess that: * Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level. * As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens. Our future is to become a broken nation governed by middle-school student level thinking. The only way to build a better America is to build a…

> * As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens.

No, it's determined by the people who actually go out and vote.

Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low. It's beyond frustrating to work with large groups of young people who are seemingly always talking politics and angry about something political, then to watch as half of them either forget to vote or act like they're too apathetic to vote.

The craziest part was seeing this apathy play out in states with vote-by-mail systems that required as little effort as possible. I still don't get it.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#436
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the real test will be, not whatever this administration does, but how much of that survives into the next one - how much is the new normal versus how much is a temporary aberration. A reminder that this is the second time that Trump has been elected. (People were saying what you're now saying after he was kicked out—an event that he says was rigged—the first time.)

Exactly: there was a brief moment when it looked like Republicans were willing to hold him accountable after the January 6th insurrection but that faltered and they circled ranks, especially when Roberts signaled that Trump had the support of the Supreme Court to the extent that they were willing to concoct a new constitutional doctrine to shield him. A lot of people were hoping he’d just go away without them having…

What makes you think he is not going to pardon every single person in his administration, every single loyal Republican?

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#437

The US drift into Adam Curtis' broad thesis in hypernormalisation(a) continues apace I see. Great to see J Pow putting up a fight but I fear this is all going one way. (a) >We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but do nothing.

This is clearly a fraudulent criminal investigation. Classic dictator strategy of charging opponents with trivial crimes to achieve political power grabs. US futures in stock market are way down.

But I bet a third of the country will blindly support it. They will see it as a just investigation into a crime. And they won’t care about the consequences. Or connect cause and effect. And with that much support the administration can get away with anything.

As for their various unconstitutional and illegal acts - what method is there to hold the executive branch accountable? It’s not like there’s a police force to arrest them right?

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting online literally is political activity. You think the hordes of young men who put Trump into power were convinced by mass public demonstration? No: posts on the Internet.

> Posting online literally is political activity. This guy's book convinced me otherwise: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/political-... "Political hobbyism" is things like commenting on the internet, as distinct from going out and convincing people to vote differently or running for offfice.

Perhaps things were different in 2020, but today the United States government considers online commentary a key input to its decisions. The President of the United States, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had Twitter on a big screen in their war room for the Venezuela operation.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. They certainly can't claim they didn't know what they would get, and they seem unconcerned by any of these actions that many of us find terrifying. It is difficult to see how we can democracy o…

> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false. Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future. It's a premise that is obviously false when…

>> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters.

> This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false.

And it's used to condemn and justify. Most politicians, including Democrats, like to pretend that winning means the unpopular policies they happen to like are the will of the people. They will constantly gaslight you on it.

In reality, American politics gives people coarse choices that few are entirely happy with and many are very unhappy with. It's really hard to justify radical partisan action without denying that fact.

Re: Statement from Jerome Powell

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder where you guys are headed. You need to know only two facts about America to guess that: * Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level. * As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens. Our future is to become a broken nation governed by middle-school student level thinking. The only way to build a better America is to build a…

> * As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens. No, it's determined by the people who actually go out and vote. Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low. It's beyond frustrating to work with large groups of young people who are seemingly always talking politics and angry about something political, then to watch as half of them either forget…

There were millions of voters who refused to vote for Harris because of the Gaza situation -- oh, the irony.

https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling

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