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For me, this is the money quote: > Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better

For me, this is the money quote: > Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance. Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions. The Fed has some tools, most notably the interest rate, that can probably slow down inflation but at the cost of probably slowing down growth. A big question has been the degree to which the Fed will give up growth in order to try to reduce inflation. This speech makes it sound like the Fed is likely to trade off a lot of growth in order to hit inflation targets. What does that mean for most people? Probably bad things in the short term. > While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. It makes it sound like the Fed is willing to inflict some damage to hit its inflation target. This isn’t a change exactly, but it’s a confirmation about what lots of people have speculated might happen.

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matwood 4y ago
Yeah, between the lines it says 'wages are too high, so we need a recession to put the worker back in line'.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  And outside the lines, we have a demographic problem with fewer and fewer young people to juice the economy and provide the labor needed to meet expected return on assets that went into many decisions borrowing wealth from the future.
- hedora 4y ago
  Ok, but the actual mechanism will be to stop giving free money to the wealthy. This is an attack on the working class in roughly the same way trickle down economics is a subsidy of the working class.
paulmd 4y ago
yeah, that's, colloquially, fed-speak for "don't make me turn this car around, I'll do it, so help me god". What he's saying there is they're willing to crank interest rates even if it slows the economy down and pushes unemployment sky-high. The Fed's dual mandates are price stability and full employment and they've just signaled which horse they're gonna back. This is the first time in living memory that we've seen a market where labor is valuable and has the upper hand in negotiations and the wealthy absolutely will not abide that. Most of the problem is still pandemic-related supply shocks and supply chain bubbles, plus energy going nuts from the russia thing. It truly is transitory and not based on changes to long-term market fundamentals. But the needle was starting to move up on worker compensation/etc and they gotta put a stop to that, can't let the plebs get a taste for financial stability.
- lg 4y ago
  As if the workers don't care about inflation and it doesn't affect their financial stability? At the lower wage end these price increases are eating up all of their nominal wage growth and more. There is a reason this inflation has become such a major political issue, people are angry about it. So yes, slowing the economy will slow down business demand e.g. for oil and that will bring some stability to gasoline prices. Powell's wishlist I'm sure is that companies will be able to freeze wages and stop new hiring for a while but avoid mass layoffs. That may not work out but the conspiracist mindset is absurd.

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matwood 4y ago

Yeah, between the lines it says 'wages are too high, so we need a recession to put the worker back in line'.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
And outside the lines, we have a demographic problem with fewer and fewer young people to juice the economy and provide the labor needed to meet expected return on assets that went into many decisions borrowing wealth from the future.
hedora 4y ago
Ok, but the actual mechanism will be to stop giving free money to the wealthy. This is an attack on the working class in roughly the same way trickle down economics is a subsidy of the working class.

paulmd 4y ago

yeah, that's, colloquially, fed-speak for "don't make me turn this car around, I'll do it, so help me god". What he's saying there is they're willing to crank interest rates even if it slows the economy down and pushes unemployment sky-high. The Fed's dual mandates are price stability and full employment and they've just signaled which horse they're gonna back. This is the first time in living memory that we've seen a market where labor is valuable and has the upper hand in negotiations and the wealthy absolutely will not abide that. Most of the problem is still pandemic-related supply shocks and supply chain bubbles, plus energy going nuts from the russia thing. It truly is transitory and not based on changes to long-term market fundamentals. But the needle was starting to move up on worker compensation/etc and they gotta put a stop to that, can't let the plebs get a taste for financial stability.

lg 4y ago
As if the workers don't care about inflation and it doesn't affect their financial stability? At the lower wage end these price increases are eating up all of their nominal wage growth and more. There is a reason this inflation has become such a major political issue, people are angry about it. So yes, slowing the economy will slow down business demand e.g. for oil and that will bring some stability to gasoline prices. Powell's wishlist I'm sure is that companies will be able to freeze wages and stop new hiring for a while but avoid mass layoffs. That may not work out but the conspiracist mindset is absurd.