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> Except the largest QE was 2008, 2010, and 2012, which caused... nothing? Bank Of England - 'Quarterly Bulletin' 2012 Q3 " Conclusion [...] The benefits of

• 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.
    • dragontamer 3y ago
      Of course our leaders are responsible for leading us. That goes without saying. But you've got to at least put forth a little bit of effort into understanding our leaders arguments. The Fed has two forces at play that meet at committee meetings. The Hawks argue for tighter policy, while the doves argue for looser policy. Many arguments are made at these meetings, and their meeting notes are public. There are also crappy websites that push conspiracy theories that have nothing to do with real data. Your arguments are closer to these conspiracy theories than the real data that has been brought forth at these public Fed Meetings. If you don't like the Fed process or discussion or data, sure I guess. That's fine. But you are pushing effectively disproven conspiracy theories and that's where you are misstepping IMO I dunno if this 'Greedflation' idea is true btw. But at least it's not the same incorrect conspiracy theory I've heard for the past decade. I'm willing to give 'greedflation' some degree of thought before discarding it. -------- 'Greedflation' is obviously discredited by Powell (current Fed Chairman), according to the article. So maybe its a fully bunk theory too. But its extremely odd to come to this topic to push alternative theories of monetary policy without at least trying to talk or criticize the topic at hand?
  • makomk 3y ago
    There's a really obvious reason why QE wouldn't have caused consumer price inflation in 2008 and its immediate aftermath: the financial crisis effectively shrunk the money supply. As the Bank of England's economists are fond of explaining, every time a bank writes a loan this creates new money from nowhere and every time a loan is paid off money is destroyed. When the financial crisis hit, banks became unwilling to loan money which meant that businesses couldn't afford to operate and laid off their staff which meant they couldn't afford to buy stuff which meant businesses couldn't afford to operate in an endless loop. Crucially, though, the actual underlying productive capacity was still there. The factories still existed, the workers and materials they needed were still available, and if only the money was there to run them then they could pay their staff and those staff could buy stuff allowing the businesses to keep operating and making everyone better off once more. This was what QE tried to do, with mixed results and some side effects. This was not true during Covid. Large chunks of the economy were effectively shut down, their workers forced to stay home and their customers legally barred from buying their products. All the capacity that went unused was basically lost; when factories tried to catch up on production and people went on holidays they'd missed, that came out of 2022 and 2023's capacity and had to compete for it with everything that people would normally have bought. Yet many contries tried to make it seem like people weren't actually worse off due to that long economic shutdown by printing money and handing it out as furlough or enhanced unemployment to replace what they'd have earned for the work they didn't do. That fell apart when the world reopened and they started spending the money because the actual underlying goods and services hadn't been produced.
  • rschneid 3y ago
    The idea of ZIRP seems to be relatively new... How are you sure the consequences and effects aren't still playing out? It seems SVB and FRC'd recent collapses were related to bets made during ZIRP and it wasn't ZIRP but the sudden, firm departure from ZIRP that 'caused' the issues. Tomaytoe Tomahtoe. You also seem to lack a rational, data-backed argument. I wouldn't go as far as to say you never have, since that seems like an ad hom and not something one would do in a good faith discussion. In such a complex, chaotic system, what gives you certainty that any given things are NOT related? That seems the claim that needs justification in our globalized economy, a rational argument would presume two things can effect each other in the age of information... The question that remains is: to what degree?
    • dragontamer 3y ago
      > You also seem to lack a rational, data-backed argument Russell's Teapot. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot) Its the ZIRP doomers who have to prove a problem. Not for me to prove a lack of a problem. Based on what I've read over the years, things like Fed Meeting notes do a much better job at predicting the economy / future than reading up on ZeroHedge conspiracy theorist sites and worrying about ZIRP in 2012. ------------ As far as my "data" goes, I just point back to QE1, QE2, and QE3. The Zero-Hedge Doomers were all saying that inflation would get out of hand. Then... it didn't. QED. This doomerism is _NOT NEW_. I've been hearing it for years. Its the boy-who-cried-wolf situation. They're still around pretending that all these decisions 10+ years ago caused things today. When the Occam's Razor argument is COVID19 changed things. So its up to the Zero-Hedge doomers to explain why their predictions over the past decade took over a decade to come into being. And if they knew it'd take a decade (or longer) for it to happen, why did it coincide with COVID19 so much (as opposed to any other situation). As far as my opinion goes, I'm making it clear. The boy cried wolf for 10 years, and is pretending his first call for crying wolf in 2008 was relevant to the 2023 bout of inflation. As opposed to... I dunno... the Baby Boomers retiring a few years early because they're tired of dealing with COVID19 (and/or COVID19 restrictions), causing a huge slump in the number of workers in the US Economy. The likes of which we're only beginning to recover from in the past month or so. With fewer workers, we're having fewer products made. Compounded with the War in Ukraine (a location that supplies a huge amount of grain to the world) and Avian Bird Flu, we're in a time period where we're losing resources (and productivity) due to a lack of workers. Lower supply causes higher prices. Also coinciding with the emergency slaughter of pigs/birds in 2021 as a COVID19 prevention measure (as well as due to severe economic contractions), our animal stocks are lower than otherwise. Leading to higher food prices. You know. Data that we have that explains these situations with a bit more clarity than 10+ year old predictions of ZIRP or QE3 from the year 2012. ---------- Or maybe this "Greedflation" idea, being discussed in the article. Maybe its got legs to stand on too. I dunno, its interesting to think about at least. But its tiring to have every economic argument derailed by the ZeroHedge conspiracy theorists posting their favorite anti-QE hate all the time. There's a much richer set of economic arguments that exists out there than ZIRP doomerism all the time, every day, ever year.