The US government entered a debt spiral a while ago (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA), and needs lower interest rates to service its tremendous debt while trying to inflate it away by printing money. That's all it comes down to. For decades fiscal conservatives were warning about it and were laughed at. Now that we're are the end game the inevitable shitshow will become apparent. You can hate Trump (rightly so), but as much as he did contribute to the problem directly, the problem is larger and systemic, and anyone else in office would have the exact same problem now.
Statement from Jerome Powell
481–490 of 871 posts
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are the renovations ridiculous?
Not the renovations themselves but the cost is supposedly at 2.5B. Personally I don’t really mind but I also don’t think government buildings need to be all that fancy with marble flooring.
I don't understand the cost either, apparently it only costs around a billion dollars to build a skyscraper? The Burj Khalifa only cost one and a half billion dollars when completed in 2010. I don't know that there's criminal activity here, but the cost of this is rather surprising to me. I knew the Federal Reserve was being renovated, but I thought it was something closer to a hundred million dollars.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t get it. Then you should have probably left it at that. Criminal investigations in this administration are just a means of pressure and harassment, they have zero bearing on any suspicion of criminal activity. I predict that within a few days Powell will be the recipient of death threats. That's the second part of the pattern.
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This administration has not been operating the DoJ in good faith. One only has to look at the buffoonish attempts to push through charges on Comey, James and other political opponents to see that.
Treating the investigation in good faith is not being neutral or unbiased. Expecting more of the same is.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#484Shots fired. Even the republicans will not be able to ignore this and they know that if Powell caves in the American economy will likely collapse. So who will speak up in his defense?
Uh have you met Republicans? Anyone not fully onboard that had even half a spine retired or got voted out. The rest either love it or just fall in line so they can collect paychecks.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stated differently, if things really are so bad (and I would be the first to agree that things are pretty bad), then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day? There are a lot of reasons for that, of course, but the bottom line is that when things get bad enough -- much worse than they are today -- then more people will take to the street, along with whatever sacrifice that entails.…
Not sure being out in the street really does much. Gives the jack booted thugs an excuse for a little recreational violence. A general strike might have an effect, but I'm not sure how you organize such a thing.
A general strike at the level required to change things requires roping in unwilling participants as well. Probably on the scale of breaking infrastructure like payment systems or over the road shipping. If nobody can ignore current events because it's not just impacting but impeding and quickly degrading their quality of life they'll get angry. However just so long as people can go home and play their videogames, or listen to their podcasts, or read their books, they'll be able to focus enough of their attention away from events and keep their stress below the critical threshold just enough that they won't do anything. Calhoun's Rat Utopia Experiment comes to mind in that the rats suffered any number of indignities, maladies, and stressors just so long as they had ample access to endorphin and melatonin sources in strong enough bursts to stave off the constant floods of cortisol and norepinephrine.
Political theory is that ten to fifteen percent of a given population needs to actively rebel in order to enact change in a nation. The U.S. is fragmented enough by distance that you would need at least thirty percent of the national population to reach this state in order to get the ten percent in each of the six regions. Currently the number of people protesting is thought to be around four to six percent nationally, meaning it's less than one percent regionally. Part of that is because it's January, and most large scale protests happen in late spring or in the summer because schools are out and the weather doesn't suck. But part of it is simply because not enough people are motivated to act. Either pessimism or lack of direct harm is keeping them from caring.
So no matter what you're going to have to piss some people off. But it'd be better to piss off the people who will share your goals and ask forgiveness, because the other group was pissed from the beginning and have no forgiveness to ask for.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#486America needs more public administrators like Powell in POTUS, SCOTUS, and COTUS: seemingly boring, reasonable, decent, professional, and competent.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#487The US government entered a debt spiral a while ago ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA ), and needs lower interest rates to service its tremendous debt while trying to inflate it away by printing money. That's all it comes down to. For decades fiscal conservatives were warning about it and were laughed at. Now that we're are the end game the inevitable shitshow will become apparent. You can hate Tru…
Exactly, interest rates must come down due to the government debt burden. This debt burden creates a strong incentive to force rates to zero, but we have to pretend the Federal Reserve is independent.
Separately, I think Jerome Powell is one of the worst Fed chairs as he is most (but not exclusively) responsible for what happened to the housing market by creating a lock-in effect and focusing on their CPI basket.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#488Thank God there's one important institution that can not be forced or bullied into compliance. Powell will go down in history as hero.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * 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…
It was determined by voters. Pretty sure that's over now too.
It's not too late. But it will be too late as soon as too many people think it's too late.
Re: Statement from Jerome Powell
#490Threats like the ones Powell's receiving would be the end of any other presidency. Why tech elites continue to align themselves with this clownshow will be a source of incredible shame that I'll hold onto forever.
I think a lot of largest tech companies feel that they'll face retribution from the current administration for not being supportive enough but would not from future admins. For many of the smaller players I think there's unfortunately a lot of people who realized there's significant money to be made in grifting. Many of the largest crypto proponents have pivoted into endeavors, whether crypto or otherwise, that profi…
> I think a lot of largest tech companies feel that they'll face retribution from the current administration for not being supportive enough but would not from future admins.
Hopefully we get the opportunity to disabuse them of this notion.