[kenneth]

This is the fault of of one person: Jerome Powell. That man has done more damage to the US and the world than any of the biggest calamities that come to mind (9/11, Katrina, Trump/Biden/Fauci depending on your politics).

The last 3 years of monetary policy have been the biggest destructive f-up ever imaginable. Printing endless money causing the collapse of the value of the dollar, causing serious inflation, to an insane raise in rates to try to undo the damage which (1) not only destroys the entire banking sector and tech industry, and (2) did absolutely nothing to fix the destruction of the USD.

[snordgren]

Americans worry about the dollar going to zero, meanwhile it was recently at a 20-year high against the euro, the pound, and the yen.

Inflation has dipped to 5% and unemployment is lower than in decades.

For all its faults, American monetary policy has been better than that of most other developed countries. The ECB went 11 years without raising interest rates.

[TexanFeller]

The current condition is not what we're worried about, it's ongoing stability which is an open question which I'm not optimistic about.

[AnimalMuppet]

You will never have ongoing stability, at least not in the way you're looking for. It's a dynamic system; it's never going to hold still. You can't have static stability in the economy. It's like driving a car. You're only a few seconds away from crashing most of the time. But you don't crash, because you keep steering. In the same way, the economy is as stable as it is because the Fed keeps steering, not because there's some condition where it will be statically stable forever after.

After each adjustment, people change their behavior to fit the new conditions. That changes the conditions and sows the seeds of the next problem. So there always has to be a next adjustment coming. Those periodic adjustments are what keeps the system stable - but they don't feel like stability, because the system isn't statically stable.

[TexanFeller]

We could have a lot more stability than we've had. The last president screamed for zero interest rates and tax cuts while the economy was already booming and got his wish. Current admin did different kinds of helicopter money for votes, even though it was likely to end in inflation. Much instability is due to politicians serving their own interests instead of ours without consequence.

[TexanFeller]

> This is the fault of of one person: Jerome Powell.

The Fed chair is nominated by the president. The last president used his bully pulpit repeatedly to strongly criticize Powell for not lowering rates to zero like other countries. I suspect there was other behind the scenes influence taking place too. The current president and Congress basically doubled down on inflationary activity, helicoptering even more money to individuals and corporations. Powell was probably not operating independently as the Fed is supposed to.

[HPsquared]

Raising the rates does help control inflation, e.g. Volcker. It's still negative real rates though (that is, interest rate minus inflation). Only just starting to become positive. The rates needed to follow inflation or you'd have a runaway unstable situation of inflation causing real rates to become more and more negative, feeding back into more inflation.

[ideamotor]

uh huh

[vxNsr]

The best part is we’re gonna hear his praise from a certain political party and their media cronies (aka NPR specifically planet money, CNN, MSNBC, NYT) for the next 3 months. They’re gonna explain how this is all good and he’s doing a fantastic job. As if a bunch of banks failing under your watch is what’s supposed to happen.