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by themitigating 1253 days ago
"Unemployment is the goal of this Fed policy - that is the point - cause unemployment so that inflation goes away."

Why would this be a goal?

3 comments

The idea is I think that inflation is caused by too much money supply in circulation, caused by overemployment, and the only cure for that is less employment. It's a lot like how inflation and deflation are two sides of the same coin, but you wouldn't "root for deflation" because that's just the opposite extreme – Fed doesn't want everyone to lose their jobs, "just a healthy amount"
This the reality because there's no political will for Congress to act, so we're left the Fed to implement anti-inflationary measures. A sufficiently empowered legislature might attack this on the supply-side so that nominal increases in wages could become real increases in wages while discouraging the supply-side from increasing prices to rent-seek those nominally increased wages.

It sucks, but it is what it is. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.

Price controls were tried in the 70’s and it failed spectacularly and often led to shortages. We had almost a decade of stagflation - poor economic performance AND inflation.

It wasn’t until the fed took control of the money supply in the late 70’s did inflation get under control.

The end goal is to reduce inflation. The goal of policy is to increase unemployment, which itself is a tool used towards the end goal.

This isn't conspiracy speak, JPowell has made this very clear.

It’s the only lever the Fed has, so that is what they can use. They don’t have control of fiscal policy only monetary.