For a community that tries to pride itself on good discussion I can't help but notice how awful the HN discourse is for anything related to economic policy. You

For a community that tries to pride itself on good discussion I can't help but notice how awful the HN discourse is for anything related to economic policy. You have a thread where the original source is a twitter post talking about higher than average inflation and in that thread you have a whole bunch of people talking about hyperinflation. These are very different things. But, first let's talk about monetary policy. The Federal Reserve has 2 mandates, full employment and price stability. When the Fed adds a massive amount of money into circulation during a massive economic downturn it's not because they're disregarding that second mandate. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Inflation is demand driven, if demand goes up and supply stays the same then prices have to go up. The literal number of dollars in circulation is meaningless if no one is willing to spend them. Adding more money to circulation increases demand which increases prices because people have more money to spend, this is how printing money can cause inflation. However, just as an increase in demand decreases the value of a dollar, decreases in demand increase the value of a dollar. This is deflation, it happens when demand falls off a cliff and it's very bad. The reason it's very bad is because it encourages people to stuff money into a mattress instead of spending it, further decreasing demand, further worsening whatever economic collapse got you into this mess to begin with, further increasing deflation. "Price stability" is a mandate that applies in both directions. Most of the money printing recently has specifically been aimed at maintaining price stability, not destroying it. Since 2008 the average rate of core PCE inflation has averaged at 1.5%, below the 2% inflation target of the Federal Reserve. It will likely take until 2023 until we reach a point where core CPE exceeds 2%[1] at which point it will be up the the Fed how much they want to raise interest rates to control additional inflation. Please note that a 2.5% rate of core PCE inflation is hardly the end of the world and is close to what we saw during the mid 2000s. The 1980s averaged about 4%. Here's a historical graph[2]. [1]https://economics.bmo.com/en/publications/detail/a151d463-e20b-41e7-b30a-294f38cbad51/ https://economics.bmo.com/en/publications/detail/a151d463-e2... [2]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BPCCRO1Q156NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BPCCRO1Q156NBEA