[nxmnxm99]

What? Lots of people (probably the Wall Street Joirnal chief among them) have been yelling since the early days of the pandemic that the enormity of stimulus and lockdowns are going to drive an inflationary disaster. As it turns out shutting down small businesses and giving everyone trillions in free money causes the value of money to drop - who knew?

How you absolve the fed and administration of all accountability here is beyond me.

[spicyusername]

> enormity of stimulus

I agree that, with benefit of hindsight, there is room to nitpick the sizing of the pandemic stimulus, but remember, at the time nobody knew how long the pandemic was going to last and how deflationary the the collapse of spending was going to be.

I do think that the link between current levels of inflation and stimulus spending is weak. At best maybe _some_ of the current issues with inflation are caused by pandemic stimulus (which is already captured in my "post-pandemic pent-up demand" bullet anyways). I'll leave the verdict on that link for the economics post-docs to write about over the next decade.

> out shutting down small businesses

How did the FED or the Biden administration "shut down small businesses"? It seemed to me like the intent of the pandemic stimulus was exactly to prevent this?

[nxmnxm99]

Lockdowns shut down small businesses, not stimulus.

Debt-to-GDP ratio skyrocketed by 30% over the pandemic, the fastest increase since the great depression. We have never taken on so much debt and given it for free to so many people.

Stimulus playing a small part in inflation? Every single person who opposed stimulus warned about this.