What if the Fed were right when said earlier in the year that inflation was going to be transitory? Let’s be clear–a kidney stone is transitory, but nobody in their right mind would say, “yeh I’m ok with having a kidney stone since it’s only transitory.” Yes I’m glad the Fed is ending their use […]
Archives
-
One more quick thought on “transitory” inflation
15 Dec 2021
-
The Federal Reserve will end its meeting any moment with the expected announcement of an accelerated curtailing of the extreme monetary stimulus it has provided since Mar 2020. The latest published speculation I’ve seen is that the Fed will end the stimulus by Mar ’22, paving the way for 2-3 interest rate hikes in 2022, […]
-
In praise and condemnation of Donald Trump
09 Dec 2021
For the most partisan of Americans, Donald Trump evokes either the most visceral negative reaction, or the most adoring adulation. As I said a few weeks ago, this I still find strange. When looking back at his tenure as President, I find many things to applaud and many things to condemn. And Donald Trump and […]
-
Why we shouldn’t listen to Dr. Fauci
01 Dec 2021
Dr. Fauci is attracting a lot of attention for his weekend remarks that attacks on him are attacks on science, because “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” Some of the criticisms are that he is revealing himself as the partisan he always was, some are that he has grown enamored with his own […]
-
As I related in the last blog post in this series, its seems likely we’re going to have inflation rates greater than the Fed’s goal in the near term (say the next couple of years)–if we don’t have some sort of economic collapse. I say the latter because when you have systematic debasement of the […]
-
Letter to WSJ on Modern Monetary Theory
22 Nov 2021
This morning I jotted the following note to James Mackintosh, who authored a weekend article on MMT and my former professor, L. Randall Wray. Mr. Mackintosh Thanks for the article on MMT; as a former student of Randy Wray during the 1990s, I appreciate seeing the consistency of his thought, even though I still see […]
-
Transitory: The Fed’s new Dirty Word. A short series on inflation, part 4–Putting it all together.
16 Nov 2021
After months of denying that inflation was a problem (just transitory you see), Joe Biden appears to be finally getting the memo (maybe he’s even reading BATG!?). It was amazing on Sunday seeing some of the Democratic talking head analysts act as if Mr. Biden could just pivot on his message and he could get […]
-
I have never really understood my fellow Americans who vote for or against a politician based on their personality. I mean, at some level, you want to vote for someone you’d like to have as your next door neighbor–you don’t have to think too hard to understand why Kamala Harris’s poll numbers are deep underwater. […]
-
In part 1 of this series, we looked at a basic macro model of the forces of how supply and demand interact, which can lead to increased price levels. In part 2, we looked at how changes in the money supply can affect the price level. In this blog post, we’re going to think more […]
-
I was going to post part 3 of my inflation series, but since no one will read it in the aftermath of the big vote last night, I’ll delay that till tomorrow and instead offer a couple of thoughts on the election. First, the VA results alone are very encouraging, but remember Mr. McAuliffe was […]