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> CTRL-f was sadly missing any mention of "money supply", "printing", "interest rates", "ZIRP", or, indeed, any policy intervention made, ever, in the history o

> 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.
  - scrlk 3y ago
    ZIRP in the 2010s didn't lead to price inflation (CPI), but I think there's a very strong argument to be made that it lead to asset price inflation [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_price_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_price_inflation
DoingIsLearning 3y ago
> Except the largest QE was 2008, 2010, and 2012, which caused... nothing? Bank Of England - 'Quarterly Bulletin' 2012 Q3 " Conclusion [...] The benefits of loose monetary policy have not been shared equally across all individuals, however. Some individuals are likely to have been adversely affected by the direct effects of QE. Many households have received lower interest income on their deposits. But changes in Bank Rate — not asset purchases — have been the dominant influence on the interest households receive on bank deposits and pay on bank loans. By pushing up a range of asset prices, asset purchases have boosted the value of households’ financial wealth held outside pension funds, although holdings are heavily skewed with the _top_5%_of_households_holding_40%_of_these_assets." [0] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150316142619/https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/qb120306.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150316142619/https://www.banko...
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Perhaps I shouldn't have said "nothing". I mean "nothing in regards to inflation", which was what the original poster was talking about. Maybe QE had an outsized effect on inequality. But that's a very different argument than what people were talking about just 2 or 3 posts above. As I said earlier: sometimes the doves win, sometimes the hawks win. Seeing the hawks and doves argue rationally is... good... for our system. There's reasons to be against QE (even back in 2008, 2010, and 2012). And creating rational arguments backed by data is a good thing. There's a lot of details that this interest-rate policy business causes, and its well worth the debate + data to try to figure out what's best for our country. But the "ZIRP causes inflation doomers" weren't making rational, data-backed arguments. They never have. And I think after a decade+ of them making such arguments, I can safely say that they've been wrong this whole time. We've given this idea long enough to play out its theory. I think its safe for us to start talking about burying that argument and moving on to better arguments.
  - jerf 3y ago
    "which was what the original poster was talking about." Nope. You massively read in what you wanted to read. My main point is that the idea that policymakers are 0% responsible is ludicrous. The interest rates controlled by the Fed can not simultaneously be super important economic controls absolutely necessary for the steering of the economy, something so important only the best trained and most experienced people can be given this absolutely vital power, and at the same time, utterly irrelevant numbers that mean nothing and it doesn't matter what they are so you can't hold them responsible for anything. You are doing exactly what they want you to do, which is get distracted by lots of other details until you no longer notice that you simultaneously hold both those beliefs even though there is no conceivable way they can both be true.

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.
- scrlk 3y ago
  ZIRP in the 2010s didn't lead to price inflation (CPI), but I think there's a very strong argument to be made that it lead to asset price inflation [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_price_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_price_inflation

DoingIsLearning 3y ago

> Except the largest QE was 2008, 2010, and 2012, which caused... nothing? Bank Of England - 'Quarterly Bulletin' 2012 Q3 " Conclusion [...] The benefits of loose monetary policy have not been shared equally across all individuals, however. Some individuals are likely to have been adversely affected by the direct effects of QE. Many households have received lower interest income on their deposits. But changes in Bank Rate — not asset purchases — have been the dominant influence on the interest households receive on bank deposits and pay on bank loans. By pushing up a range of asset prices, asset purchases have boosted the value of households’ financial wealth held outside pension funds, although holdings are heavily skewed with the _top_5%_of_households_holding_40%_of_these_assets." [0] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150316142619/https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/qb120306.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150316142619/https://www.banko...

dragontamer 3y ago
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "nothing". I mean "nothing in regards to inflation", which was what the original poster was talking about. Maybe QE had an outsized effect on inequality. But that's a very different argument than what people were talking about just 2 or 3 posts above. As I said earlier: sometimes the doves win, sometimes the hawks win. Seeing the hawks and doves argue rationally is... good... for our system. There's reasons to be against QE (even back in 2008, 2010, and 2012). And creating rational arguments backed by data is a good thing. There's a lot of details that this interest-rate policy business causes, and its well worth the debate + data to try to figure out what's best for our country. But the "ZIRP causes inflation doomers" weren't making rational, data-backed arguments. They never have. And I think after a decade+ of them making such arguments, I can safely say that they've been wrong this whole time. We've given this idea long enough to play out its theory. I think its safe for us to start talking about burying that argument and moving on to better arguments.
- jerf 3y ago
  "which was what the original poster was talking about." Nope. You massively read in what you wanted to read. My main point is that the idea that policymakers are 0% responsible is ludicrous. The interest rates controlled by the Fed can not simultaneously be super important economic controls absolutely necessary for the steering of the economy, something so important only the best trained and most experienced people can be given this absolutely vital power, and at the same time, utterly irrelevant numbers that mean nothing and it doesn't matter what they are so you can't hold them responsible for anything. You are doing exactly what they want you to do, which is get distracted by lots of other details until you no longer notice that you simultaneously hold both those beliefs even though there is no conceivable way they can both be true.