[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.