| tophcfa |
12-10-2021 09:45 PM |
I wish the powers that be would stop blaming inflation on false narratives like the supply chain and the pandemic. Time tested and proven economics tells the real truth. Ever since the housing bubble crashed in 2007/2008 interest rates have been kept artificially low, the money supply has been steadily and dangerously increased through something called quantitative easing, and non-stop deficit spending has resulted in ever increasing levels of unsustainable debt. All of these actions used to be things that were reserved as very short term emergency measures to help pick up the economy during a time of crises, then very quickly reversed to prevent run away inflation. However, this time around these once extreme and drastic measures were never reversed, instead they have been irresponsibly continued non-stop for almost 14 years. The result is that our economy became hopelessly addicted to them. We now live in a crazy world where the market does good when we get bad economic news because the market views this as a reason to continue these reckless and irresponsible policies. Since there is a significant lag effect between irresponsible economic policy and the ultimate result of runaway inflation, we are only now beginning to see the results, which is runaway inflation, not transitional. Sure, supply chain shortages might be the fuse that finally ignited the ticking time bomb, but the bomb would have gone off eventually regardless. Unfortunately, the longer this irresponsible policy is allowed to go on, the harder it is to break the addiction, and the worse the pain is when the crap ultimately hits the fan. So here we are, get used to this inflation. The only way to get this under control, in any reasonable time frame, will be to follow the playbook of Paul Volcker, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. During the late 70’s and early 80’s, Volcker jacked up interest rates to extremely high levels, with short term T Bills reaching 20% and the 10 year UST rate reaching almost 16%. Unfortunately, taking these actions today is next to impossible without totally crippling the economy. Unlike the late 70’s, our economy today is hopelessly addicted to debt and cheap money. Raising interest rates to tame inflation when a country is over $30 trillion (and counting) in debt would result in literally every tax dollar collected needing to be used to just pay the interest on the debt, with little hope of ever paying down any of the debt. Think about it, there would not be a single penny available to spend on things like defense, infrastructure, or social programs. Talk about politically unacceptable! So here we are, facing a prolonged period of runaway inflation, caused by years and years of irresponsible policy, with virtually no politically acceptable tools at our disposal to do anything meaningful about it. Older people who have responsibly saved and invested over many years should be able to weather this storm, albeit possibly having to make some small sacrifices. On the other hand, I am extremely worried that younger generations will be feeling pain from this for a long time. Bottom line, the outlook for the value (purchasing power) of the dollar is not good.
Dam, I haven’t exercised my brain like that since I retired many years ago. One last thing, this is NOT a political post. The irresponsible policy, that has us where we are, has been going on for many many years, through multiple administrations and Federal Reserve Chairpeople, run and appointed by both parties. Buckle up, it’s going to be a long and rough ride.
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