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"Once dismissed as a fringe theory, the idea that corporate thirst for profits drives up inflation, aka "greedflation," is now being taken more seriously by eco

by jerf 3y ago

"Once dismissed as a fringe theory, the idea that corporate thirst for profits drives up inflation, aka "greedflation," is now being taken more seriously by economists, policymakers and the business press." Policymakers would like to blame inflation on greedflation. Their syncophants agree with them. What an astonishing coincidence. It's amazing how helpless and feckless our poor ol' policymakers are. Constantly caught out flatfooted and surprised at every turn by how bad things are. Nothing is ever their fault because they're just so shocked and surprised by how things are going. One does find oneself wondering what exactly they're good for if they're so constantly shocked by everything. CTRL-f was sadly missing any mention of "money supply", "printing", "interest rates", "ZIRP", or, indeed, any policy intervention made, ever, in the history of man, by policymakers. How amazing all the power they have, yet they are a flat 0% responsible. It's pretty impressive to be that constantly befuddled and flummuxed, yet have all that power, and never be responsible for anything at all, not even a little. That's a pretty impressive combination of attributes. (Bear in mind I'm open to the possibility that it isn't 100% just the money printing, currency supply, policies, etc. The real world is complicated and policymakers aren't the only actors by a long shot, no question. But if they're truly 0% responsible, fire them, because apparently they're not doing anything. 0% responsibility is impossible.)

dragontamer 3y ago
> CTRL-f was sadly missing any mention of "money supply", "printing", "interest rates", "ZIRP", or, indeed, any policy intervention made, ever, in the history of man, by policymakers. Except the largest QE was 2008, 2010, and 2012, which caused... nothing? Anti-QE people have been claiming that QE causes problems for a decade. Eventually COVID19 causes a problem and the QE people come out of the woodwork saying "I TOLD YA SOOOOO", ignoring COVID19 entirely and trying to pretend that they've been right for a decade all along. ------------------ Policy makers get things wrong on occassion. That's cool. But the policy makers got it more correct than the "anti-QE" guys for the entirety of the 2008 through 2020 timespan. Being wrong once every decade is fine. Its better than being wrong for a whole decade and then pretending that your theories finally became correct due to unrelated factors later. I don't expect perfection from our policymakers, nor consistency. I recognize that in a democracy, our policy makers change every 4 to 8 years and we contradict ourselves regularly. But overall, their ability to predict the future remains superior over the typical folk who cry about things like ZeroHedge.
- changoplatanero 3y ago
  Look at this graph of the money supply. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL#0 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL#0 I see one huge jump and it wasn't in 2008
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Ctrl-F the above post. He wasn't talking about M2 money supply. He was talking about ZIRP and QE. Presumably 2008 QE1, 2010 QE2, and 2012 QE3. (Either talking about those, or preferring to ignore those historical moments). At least, all the online people for the last decade have been calling "QE1 / QE2 / QE3" the money printer. (You know, not the people who understand the economy. But the people who use words like ZIRP, Money Printer, and inflation in the same sentence). ----------- We have a complex economy with many issues. But the one thing I've learned is to never trust what the ZeroHedge doomers say. Sometimes, the Hawks are correct. Sometimes, the doves are correct. But without a doubt, the conspiracy theorists will come out of the woodwork and complain about money printers or whatever (despite M2 declining this past year).
  - Arainach 3y ago
    The "spike" was when the metrics changed: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/h6_technical_qa.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/h6_technical_qa.h...
- voisin 3y ago
  ZIRP wasn’t without inflation, it was just limited to financial assets - look at housing supply worldwide, equities, bonds, art, etc etc. This became a problem in the latest round of money printing when that inflation finally spread into CPI and affected food and other necessities (though housing is a necessity and people have been screaming about that for two decades as it continued to rocket higher…)
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    > ZIRP wasn’t without inflation, it was just limited to financial assets By that definition, the 1990s were a period of great inflation. Which is... not what that word means. > “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ > ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ > ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” ------------ When financial assets go up in value, that's normally called a "bull market" by the way. Not "inflation". Changing the definition of "inflation" to match your preconceived theories of how the economy works is... pretty much what Humpty Dumpty does in the Alice-in-Wonderland series.
kranke155 3y ago
Joseph Stiglitz says you’re quite wrong. He’s a Nobel Prize winning economist. https://youtu.be/4BAsZIHp9HI https://youtu.be/4BAsZIHp9HI Yourself ? Do you have a 58 minute lecture backed by rigorous data on why you’re so right? Or just conviction ?
- jerf 3y ago
  Joseph Stiglitz says that policymakers are just helpless people adrift on the oceans of chaos, and that we should be OK when they point at everything else because it's completely true they're never responsible for anything? If so, he's an idiot no matter how many Nobel Prizes he has. If, as is far more likely, that's not at all what he says in those 58 minutes, you've been conveniently distracted by what is cognitively available to you from my main point, which is, if policymakers are effective, then they are responsible to a large degree. Corporate greed is a ludicrous blame shifting operation and honestly a measure of just how much responsibility they hold for what is going on in the economy right now if they're stretching for such a self-evidently stupid defense. As others have pointed out, it isn't that companies aren't greedy, it's that they have never ever ever been not greedy.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    What a bizarre response. More anger than anything else.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Most of your comment is just an appeal to authority, which is a fallacy. Focus on the rigorous data part!
  - kranke155 3y ago
    My Philosophy teacher always said that appeals to authority aren't quite wrong, only that they shouldn't be used in isolation. I lay out my argument: 1. Joseph Stiglitz is an award winning economist 2. He has studied the situation in depth 3. His conclusion is "greedflation" type effects are real
pazimzadeh 3y ago
Personally I hear about money printing ALL THE TIME. This is the first time I've heard a serious discussion about companies opportunistically raising prices.
enragedcacti 3y ago
> CTRL-f was sadly missing any mention of "money supply", "printing", "interest rates", "ZIRP", or, indeed, any policy intervention made, ever, in the history of man, by policymakers. Do we have to "All Xs Matter" every argument? I don't read this article as making a strong claim that greedflation is the ONLY cause, just that is now being taken seriously when it was derided before. If you want an article that argues against greedflation and discusses other potential causes, you don't have to read more than three sentences before the author links you to it! The piece ends with the Chair of the Fed (i.e. a policymaker) denying profits are even "a cause" of inflation!
quantified 3y ago
What a bunch of strawmen. And stream of belittling with no backing evidence. If you were to put forth any, you'd need to pick actual policymakers who make the relevant policies, because "policymakers" can be found with every predilection if you want to find a quote.

by jerf 3y ago

dragontamer 3y ago

> CTRL-f was sadly missing any mention of "money supply", "printing", "interest rates", "ZIRP", or, indeed, any policy intervention made, ever, in the history of man, by policymakers. Except the largest QE was 2008, 2010, and 2012, which caused... nothing? Anti-QE people have been claiming that QE causes problems for a decade. Eventually COVID19 causes a problem and the QE people come out of the woodwork saying "I TOLD YA SOOOOO", ignoring COVID19 entirely and trying to pretend that they've been right for a decade all along. ------------------ Policy makers get things wrong on occassion. That's cool. But the policy makers got it more correct than the "anti-QE" guys for the entirety of the 2008 through 2020 timespan. Being wrong once every decade is fine. Its better than being wrong for a whole decade and then pretending that your theories finally became correct due to unrelated factors later. I don't expect perfection from our policymakers, nor consistency. I recognize that in a democracy, our policy makers change every 4 to 8 years and we contradict ourselves regularly. But overall, their ability to predict the future remains superior over the typical folk who cry about things like ZeroHedge.

changoplatanero 3y ago
Look at this graph of the money supply. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL#0 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL#0 I see one huge jump and it wasn't in 2008
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Ctrl-F the above post. He wasn't talking about M2 money supply. He was talking about ZIRP and QE. Presumably 2008 QE1, 2010 QE2, and 2012 QE3. (Either talking about those, or preferring to ignore those historical moments). At least, all the online people for the last decade have been calling "QE1 / QE2 / QE3" the money printer. (You know, not the people who understand the economy. But the people who use words like ZIRP, Money Printer, and inflation in the same sentence). ----------- We have a complex economy with many issues. But the one thing I've learned is to never trust what the ZeroHedge doomers say. Sometimes, the Hawks are correct. Sometimes, the doves are correct. But without a doubt, the conspiracy theorists will come out of the woodwork and complain about money printers or whatever (despite M2 declining this past year).
- Arainach 3y ago
  The "spike" was when the metrics changed: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/h6_technical_qa.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/h6_technical_qa.h...
voisin 3y ago
ZIRP wasn’t without inflation, it was just limited to financial assets - look at housing supply worldwide, equities, bonds, art, etc etc. This became a problem in the latest round of money printing when that inflation finally spread into CPI and affected food and other necessities (though housing is a necessity and people have been screaming about that for two decades as it continued to rocket higher…)
- dragontamer 3y ago
  > ZIRP wasn’t without inflation, it was just limited to financial assets By that definition, the 1990s were a period of great inflation. Which is... not what that word means. > “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ > ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ > ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” ------------ When financial assets go up in value, that's normally called a "bull market" by the way. Not "inflation". Changing the definition of "inflation" to match your preconceived theories of how the economy works is... pretty much what Humpty Dumpty does in the Alice-in-Wonderland series.

kranke155 3y ago

Joseph Stiglitz says you’re quite wrong. He’s a Nobel Prize winning economist. https://youtu.be/4BAsZIHp9HI https://youtu.be/4BAsZIHp9HI Yourself ? Do you have a 58 minute lecture backed by rigorous data on why you’re so right? Or just conviction ?

jerf 3y ago
Joseph Stiglitz says that policymakers are just helpless people adrift on the oceans of chaos, and that we should be OK when they point at everything else because it's completely true they're never responsible for anything? If so, he's an idiot no matter how many Nobel Prizes he has. If, as is far more likely, that's not at all what he says in those 58 minutes, you've been conveniently distracted by what is cognitively available to you from my main point, which is, if policymakers are effective, then they are responsible to a large degree. Corporate greed is a ludicrous blame shifting operation and honestly a measure of just how much responsibility they hold for what is going on in the economy right now if they're stretching for such a self-evidently stupid defense. As others have pointed out, it isn't that companies aren't greedy, it's that they have never ever ever been not greedy.
- kranke155 3y ago
  What a bizarre response. More anger than anything else.
karaterobot 3y ago
Most of your comment is just an appeal to authority, which is a fallacy. Focus on the rigorous data part!
- kranke155 3y ago
  My Philosophy teacher always said that appeals to authority aren't quite wrong, only that they shouldn't be used in isolation. I lay out my argument: 1. Joseph Stiglitz is an award winning economist 2. He has studied the situation in depth 3. His conclusion is "greedflation" type effects are real

pazimzadeh 3y ago

Personally I hear about money printing ALL THE TIME. This is the first time I've heard a serious discussion about companies opportunistically raising prices.

enragedcacti 3y ago

> CTRL-f was sadly missing any mention of "money supply", "printing", "interest rates", "ZIRP", or, indeed, any policy intervention made, ever, in the history of man, by policymakers. Do we have to "All Xs Matter" every argument? I don't read this article as making a strong claim that greedflation is the ONLY cause, just that is now being taken seriously when it was derided before. If you want an article that argues against greedflation and discusses other potential causes, you don't have to read more than three sentences before the author links you to it! The piece ends with the Chair of the Fed (i.e. a policymaker) denying profits are even "a cause" of inflation!

quantified 3y ago

What a bunch of strawmen. And stream of belittling with no backing evidence. If you were to put forth any, you'd need to pick actual policymakers who make the relevant policies, because "policymakers" can be found with every predilection if you want to find a quote.