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Lol. What a loaded piece-of-shit article. > According to a transcript of the presser published by the Wall Street Journal, Powell blamed this inflation crisis,

by Aunche 4y ago

Lol. What a loaded piece-of-shit article. > According to a transcript of the presser published by the Wall Street Journal, Powell blamed this inflation crisis, which is global, not on the proxy war in Ukraine [1] and Western sanctions on Russia [2], but rather on U.S. workers supposedly making too much money. [1] https://multipolarista.com/2022/03/24/us-official-ukraine-nato-proxy-war-russia/ https://multipolarista.com/2022/03/24/us-official-ukraine-na... [2] https://multipolarista.com/2022/03/24/us-official-ukraine-nato-proxy-war-russia/ https://multipolarista.com/2022/03/24/us-official-ukraine-na... This is basically Russian propaganda. The author and founder of that website has a history of sympathetic covarage of authoritarian regimes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone). It's also funny that these far-left journalists always cite their own previous articles. Powell mentions the war in Ukraine as contributing to inflation, but since he didn't call it a "proxy war" I guess it doesn't count. > “Employers are having difficulties filling job openings, and wages are rising at the fastest pace in many years,” Powell complained. LOL. Definitely sounds like a complaint to me. No editorializing here. That's why Powell said this later in the press conference: > If you think about it, if you look at the last cycle, we had a very, very—longest expansion cycle in our recorded history, and in the last two, three years, you had the benefits of this tight labor market going to people in the lower quartiles and it was—you know, racial wealth and income—not wealth but income gaps were coming down, wage gaps. So it’s a really great thing. We’d all love to get back to that place, but to get back to anything like that place, you need price stability. https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-postmeeting-press-conference-11651696613 https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-po...

imtringued 4y ago
People are obsessed with real estate prices going up because low interest rates result in full employment which means more people can afford to pay more for a house. The strange part is the argument that raising interest rates is going to somehow make housing more affordable. It doesn't solve the underlying problem of a lack of housing near job centres. An interest rate hike means less employment and that is ultimately what drives house prices down. It doesn't make housing more affordable, there isn't enough housing to begin with and now there won't be any jobs. If you want to lower home prices you are going to need to stop land speculation and so far public land ownership has been the only way to do that e.g. in Singapore. The alternative is a land value tax. This orthogonal problem needs orthogonal solutions. Money is about employment and trade, not about housing. Housing is a land allocation problem e.g. zoning.

by Aunche 4y ago

imtringued 4y ago

People are obsessed with real estate prices going up because low interest rates result in full employment which means more people can afford to pay more for a house. The strange part is the argument that raising interest rates is going to somehow make housing more affordable. It doesn't solve the underlying problem of a lack of housing near job centres. An interest rate hike means less employment and that is ultimately what drives house prices down. It doesn't make housing more affordable, there isn't enough housing to begin with and now there won't be any jobs. If you want to lower home prices you are going to need to stop land speculation and so far public land ownership has been the only way to do that e.g. in Singapore. The alternative is a land value tax. This orthogonal problem needs orthogonal solutions. Money is about employment and trade, not about housing. Housing is a land allocation problem e.g. zoning.