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This is an incredibly complicated question, so I'm glad the author put in the work to really try to flesh out the details. In the end I'd say the US's broken le

This is an incredibly complicated question, so I'm glad the author put in the work to really try to flesh out the details. In the end I'd say the US's broken legislative system has forced the fed to make some really tough decisions. The decade following the great recession should have been a time of expansionary fiscal policy. Instead of congress investing in our future they argued and accomplished nothing. The board of the fed saw congress's failure and figured "if this country can't execute fiscal policy well at least we can step in with expansionary monetary policy". Came to kick them in the ass when covid rolled around, but it was also arguably responsible for one the best decades of economic growth in human history.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
throw0101b 3y ago
> The decade following the great recession should have been a time of expansionary fiscal policy. Instead of congress investing in our future they argued and accomplished nothing. Do is "they" specifically? Because as I remember it the Republicans wanted to sink a Democratic president, and so hampered/slowed the recovery. And let's forget the right-wing idea of "expansionary austerity": * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contractio... And the deficit hawks who said that the US had to cut debt or Bad Things would happen (which suddenly wasn't a problem went Trump got into office and tax cuts were desired): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_hawk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_hawk
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  > which suddenly wasn't a problem went Trump got into office and tax cuts were desired There are plenty of us that rage against _both_ parties' negligence when it comes to balancing the budget. Socially liberal and fiscally conservative as us libertarian-ish types say. Lots of us hated Trump for cutting taxes and bullying the fed to lower rates while the economy was already booming.
  - mikrl 3y ago
    It’s like the dark sibling of Keynes, eh? At least Keynesian theory had a notion of slowing an economy that needed slowing, and boosting an economy that needed boosting, through a complementary mechanism. The poisonous application on the other hand is to boost an economy at capacity, and use the inevitable crash to funnel wealth to… who knows where?
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  Deficit hawks remained deficit hawks under Trump, but Trump was definitely not a hawk. https://rollcall.com/2017/09/06/trump-sides-with-dems-as-debt-spending-deals-struck/ https://rollcall.com/2017/09/06/trump-sides-with-dems-as-deb...
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
There should have been a lot of expansion at the beginning then a pull back when things started heating up too much. Unfortunately, that never happened under Obama (or we can blame the Obama administration and the Fed for never looking for the right signals), and by the time it was obvious the economy was overheating, Trump was in power. It would be nice if we could get away from these big boom and big bust cycles. A bit of fiscal discipline could go a long way.
- floydnoel 3y ago
  it's funny you say that, the entire supposed purpose that the Fed was created for was to do just that: get rid of the boom and bust cycles. Unfortunately they never figured it out.
- creato 3y ago
  This is politically impossible in the US. The electorate is too short sighted and will blame the current president for killing the economy no matter how sensible the policy actually is. Democrats maybe make a half hearted attempt at this, but Republicans are nakedly partisan in their economic policy, using outright economic stimulus in the best of times: George Bush's "peace dividend", Trump's tax cuts and pressuring the Fed on interest rates. Of course this was right after he attacked the Fed during Obama's presidency for keeping rates low for political reasons. Until these political games become ineffective on voters, economic policy will be stupid.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Ya, we basically get what we vote for. Our political leaders are fiscally not disciplined because we demand them not to be. At best, fiscal discipline is used to fight the otherside’s agenda, like what happened during Bill Clinton’s term coupled with the Republican revolution of 94. That led to a surplus.
  - tacocataco 3y ago
    If we got rid of First Past The Post voting, third parties could be viable because there wouldnt be a spoiler effect. More players involved would increase the chances of fresh blood and new ideas. Instead, we are locked into a 2 party system filled with literal fossils. it's obvious to me when there is a tech related congressional hearing that both mainstream political parties are holding us back. I guess that was good to have people from the cold war Era involved when Russia started pushing Ukraine around. Like a clock that's frozen in time is right twice a day... Electoral reform is doable one state at a time, some states already use Rankes Choice voting.
deepzn 3y ago
A decade of government spending on critical infrastructure at low interest rates was missed. Edit: Want to add also, the rich got richer as monetary policy flowed into capital markets, while inflation increased hurting the poor the most in the last couple years.
- judge2020 3y ago
  Sounds like Congress achieved exactly what it set out to do.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  Seriously, it's no longer even funny to us Europeans how bad your infrastructure is. I always thought it's because the population density is much lower in the US, but I don't believe any more that it is the primary reason.
  - nayuki 3y ago
    No, it is due to population density. If your country has 2× or 4× the amount of road area per capita but not correspondingly more taxes per capita, the infrastructure is going to suffer. Strong Towns ( https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/ ) has many articles on this topic.
- midasuni 3y ago
  Didn’t you just have a bridge collapse on a major highway?
  - irrational 3y ago
    You mean the one where a tanker truck full of gasoline caught fire directly underneath it?
    - midasuni 3y ago
      No idea, I saw a headline
vlovich123 3y ago
> Came to kick them in the ass when covid rolled around, but it was also arguably responsible for one the best decades of economic growth in human history. Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  Yes, the planet got destroyed. What does this even mean? The planet is not destroyed. US Carbon emissions actually went down over that decade. The environment generally is better in many ways than previous decades. Acid rain is gone: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acid-rain-environment-earth-day/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acid-rain-environment-earth-day... Ozone hole is shrinking: https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinking-in-2022-nasa-and-noaa-scientists-say https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinkin... In 1981 in LA there were 4 good air quality days for the whole year, 56 moderate days, and 159 stage 5 alert, Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days. In 2021 there were 41 Good days, 228 Moderate days, and only 1 Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days. https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev01b.php https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev01b.php
  - saurik 3y ago
    https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
  - sh34r 3y ago
    Meanwhile, last week in NYC: https://secretnyc.co/nyc-air-quality-photos/ https://secretnyc.co/nyc-air-quality-photos/ Cool and normal! Nothing to see here, folks. But of course, the planet is fine! The people are f'ed! The planet's not going anywhere, we are! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmo8sh77G6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmo8sh77G6Y
  - modo_mario 3y ago
    >US Carbon emissions actually went down over that decade. The US per capita emissions are still only preceded by micronations and petrostates as far as I'm aware. In fact they're still double of those in the EU despite few countries like Poland relying heavily on fossil fuels. Chinese people have managed to surpass the europeans but even they emit about half as much as Americans and are slowing down. >The environment generally is better in many ways than previous decades. It feels a bit like replying to a fictitious argument about declining life expectancy by saying "but car & gun deaths are down!". I care a bit less for more localized short term bound air quality but it's absolutely great that the ozone hole is shrinking and such. Humanity managed to get togheter and make changes that had great impact. I however feel like we managed to do this because the changes needed were comparatively small. Now please do not under any circumstances use these victories as argumentation to push back against fixing different issues. The decline in insect biomass in many places is horrifying and as far as I know still accelerating. Our fossil fuel extraction is still growing. We'll see it decline when it starts getting harder to extract in a few years yes but I don't see that as reason to pat ourselves on the back. It's not a problem that fixes itself relatively quickly necessarily in the same way that stopping the use of CFK's was. Natural sequestration will remain very very slow. Taking it out of the carbon cycle in a good way is many times more difficult than releasing it. We could have given ourselves so so much more leeway by tackling the easier parts of this dependence but didn't and we still often don't.
netbioserror 3y ago
Broken legislative system? Not only was it designed to lock up in a split-Congress scenario, it was also explicitly given the responsibility of minting coinage and the Constitution was written silent on the issue of a central bank (which via the 10th Amendement thus is prohibited to the federal government and reserved to the states). The debate on the very nature of the country's money goes back to its founding. But here you are making very European assumptions about the role of legislature and central banking. You're free to advocate for those roles, but don't conflate the circumstances with dysfunction. An active legislature and the Fed's existence are diametrically opposed to the federal government's principal design.
- adsfgiodsnrio 3y ago
  [flagged]
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  It's a pretty far-fetched argument that the federal government doesn't have the power to create a central bank. Who are you to argue against John Marshall?
  - netbioserror 3y ago
    It's pretty far-fetched to argue that any person, historical or otherwise, has more claim to authority over federal powers than the Constitution. Who are you to argue against Article I Section 8 and the 10th Amendment? And the 9th for that matter?
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      commerce clause gives congress the power to set up a central bank. also > To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; regulate the value thereof literally describes a central bank.
      - netbioserror 3y ago
oilchange 3y ago
> In the end I'd say the US's broken legislative system has forced the fed to make some really tough decisions. But don't the fed and congress serve the same master? Congress is 'broken' for a reason. > The board of the fed saw congress's failure and figured "if this country can't execute fiscal policy well at least we can step in with expansionary monetary policy". No. The idea of using monetary policy over fiscal policy has been in use for decades. It's simpler, quicker and politically easier. > Came to kick them in the ass when covid rolled around That's when we had the expansionary fiscal policy. Where's the praise for congress? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND > but it was also arguably responsible for one the best decades of economic growth in human history. It was responsible for the biggest asset price increases ( stocks, housing prices, etc ) along with extreme wealth disparity, stagnant wages, low socio-economic advancement and the political chaos of obama-trump-biden. Crazy to see someone praise a bunch of unaccountable international bankers for their monetary policy especially when the monetary policy causes the economic problems in the first place. And then put down elected politicians for their lack of fiscal policy and ignore their expansionary fiscal policy during covid. Comment reads like FED PR.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
How much of that growth is paper? Additionally, A lot of infrastructural maintenance and investment was deferred by communities that should have been taking advantage of low rates which will cost a premium in the future, likely compounded by higher rates.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

throw0101b 3y ago

> The decade following the great recession should have been a time of expansionary fiscal policy. Instead of congress investing in our future they argued and accomplished nothing. Do is "they" specifically? Because as I remember it the Republicans wanted to sink a Democratic president, and so hampered/slowed the recovery. And let's forget the right-wing idea of "expansionary austerity": * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contractio... And the deficit hawks who said that the US had to cut debt or Bad Things would happen (which suddenly wasn't a problem went Trump got into office and tax cuts were desired): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_hawk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_hawk

TexanFeller 3y ago
> which suddenly wasn't a problem went Trump got into office and tax cuts were desired There are plenty of us that rage against _both_ parties' negligence when it comes to balancing the budget. Socially liberal and fiscally conservative as us libertarian-ish types say. Lots of us hated Trump for cutting taxes and bullying the fed to lower rates while the economy was already booming.
- mikrl 3y ago
  It’s like the dark sibling of Keynes, eh? At least Keynesian theory had a notion of slowing an economy that needed slowing, and boosting an economy that needed boosting, through a complementary mechanism. The poisonous application on the other hand is to boost an economy at capacity, and use the inevitable crash to funnel wealth to… who knows where?
WillPostForFood 3y ago
Deficit hawks remained deficit hawks under Trump, but Trump was definitely not a hawk. https://rollcall.com/2017/09/06/trump-sides-with-dems-as-debt-spending-deals-struck/ https://rollcall.com/2017/09/06/trump-sides-with-dems-as-deb...

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

There should have been a lot of expansion at the beginning then a pull back when things started heating up too much. Unfortunately, that never happened under Obama (or we can blame the Obama administration and the Fed for never looking for the right signals), and by the time it was obvious the economy was overheating, Trump was in power. It would be nice if we could get away from these big boom and big bust cycles. A bit of fiscal discipline could go a long way.

floydnoel 3y ago
it's funny you say that, the entire supposed purpose that the Fed was created for was to do just that: get rid of the boom and bust cycles. Unfortunately they never figured it out.
creato 3y ago
This is politically impossible in the US. The electorate is too short sighted and will blame the current president for killing the economy no matter how sensible the policy actually is. Democrats maybe make a half hearted attempt at this, but Republicans are nakedly partisan in their economic policy, using outright economic stimulus in the best of times: George Bush's "peace dividend", Trump's tax cuts and pressuring the Fed on interest rates. Of course this was right after he attacked the Fed during Obama's presidency for keeping rates low for political reasons. Until these political games become ineffective on voters, economic policy will be stupid.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Ya, we basically get what we vote for. Our political leaders are fiscally not disciplined because we demand them not to be. At best, fiscal discipline is used to fight the otherside’s agenda, like what happened during Bill Clinton’s term coupled with the Republican revolution of 94. That led to a surplus.
- tacocataco 3y ago
  If we got rid of First Past The Post voting, third parties could be viable because there wouldnt be a spoiler effect. More players involved would increase the chances of fresh blood and new ideas. Instead, we are locked into a 2 party system filled with literal fossils. it's obvious to me when there is a tech related congressional hearing that both mainstream political parties are holding us back. I guess that was good to have people from the cold war Era involved when Russia started pushing Ukraine around. Like a clock that's frozen in time is right twice a day... Electoral reform is doable one state at a time, some states already use Rankes Choice voting.

deepzn 3y ago

A decade of government spending on critical infrastructure at low interest rates was missed. Edit: Want to add also, the rich got richer as monetary policy flowed into capital markets, while inflation increased hurting the poor the most in the last couple years.

judge2020 3y ago
Sounds like Congress achieved exactly what it set out to do.
H8crilA 3y ago
Seriously, it's no longer even funny to us Europeans how bad your infrastructure is. I always thought it's because the population density is much lower in the US, but I don't believe any more that it is the primary reason.
- nayuki 3y ago
  No, it is due to population density. If your country has 2× or 4× the amount of road area per capita but not correspondingly more taxes per capita, the infrastructure is going to suffer. Strong Towns ( https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/ ) has many articles on this topic.
midasuni 3y ago
Didn’t you just have a bridge collapse on a major highway?
- irrational 3y ago
  You mean the one where a tanker truck full of gasoline caught fire directly underneath it?
  - midasuni 3y ago
    No idea, I saw a headline

vlovich123 3y ago

> Came to kick them in the ass when covid rolled around, but it was also arguably responsible for one the best decades of economic growth in human history. Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

WillPostForFood 3y ago
Yes, the planet got destroyed. What does this even mean? The planet is not destroyed. US Carbon emissions actually went down over that decade. The environment generally is better in many ways than previous decades. Acid rain is gone: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acid-rain-environment-earth-day/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acid-rain-environment-earth-day... Ozone hole is shrinking: https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinking-in-2022-nasa-and-noaa-scientists-say https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinkin... In 1981 in LA there were 4 good air quality days for the whole year, 56 moderate days, and 159 stage 5 alert, Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days. In 2021 there were 41 Good days, 228 Moderate days, and only 1 Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days. https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev01b.php https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev01b.php
- saurik 3y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- sh34r 3y ago
  Meanwhile, last week in NYC: https://secretnyc.co/nyc-air-quality-photos/ https://secretnyc.co/nyc-air-quality-photos/ Cool and normal! Nothing to see here, folks. But of course, the planet is fine! The people are f'ed! The planet's not going anywhere, we are! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmo8sh77G6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmo8sh77G6Y
- modo_mario 3y ago
  >US Carbon emissions actually went down over that decade. The US per capita emissions are still only preceded by micronations and petrostates as far as I'm aware. In fact they're still double of those in the EU despite few countries like Poland relying heavily on fossil fuels. Chinese people have managed to surpass the europeans but even they emit about half as much as Americans and are slowing down. >The environment generally is better in many ways than previous decades. It feels a bit like replying to a fictitious argument about declining life expectancy by saying "but car & gun deaths are down!". I care a bit less for more localized short term bound air quality but it's absolutely great that the ozone hole is shrinking and such. Humanity managed to get togheter and make changes that had great impact. I however feel like we managed to do this because the changes needed were comparatively small. Now please do not under any circumstances use these victories as argumentation to push back against fixing different issues. The decline in insect biomass in many places is horrifying and as far as I know still accelerating. Our fossil fuel extraction is still growing. We'll see it decline when it starts getting harder to extract in a few years yes but I don't see that as reason to pat ourselves on the back. It's not a problem that fixes itself relatively quickly necessarily in the same way that stopping the use of CFK's was. Natural sequestration will remain very very slow. Taking it out of the carbon cycle in a good way is many times more difficult than releasing it. We could have given ourselves so so much more leeway by tackling the easier parts of this dependence but didn't and we still often don't.

netbioserror 3y ago

Broken legislative system? Not only was it designed to lock up in a split-Congress scenario, it was also explicitly given the responsibility of minting coinage and the Constitution was written silent on the issue of a central bank (which via the 10th Amendement thus is prohibited to the federal government and reserved to the states). The debate on the very nature of the country's money goes back to its founding. But here you are making very European assumptions about the role of legislature and central banking. You're free to advocate for those roles, but don't conflate the circumstances with dysfunction. An active legislature and the Fed's existence are diametrically opposed to the federal government's principal design.

adsfgiodsnrio 3y ago
[flagged]
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
It's a pretty far-fetched argument that the federal government doesn't have the power to create a central bank. Who are you to argue against John Marshall?
- netbioserror 3y ago
  It's pretty far-fetched to argue that any person, historical or otherwise, has more claim to authority over federal powers than the Constitution. Who are you to argue against Article I Section 8 and the 10th Amendment? And the 9th for that matter?
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    commerce clause gives congress the power to set up a central bank. also > To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; regulate the value thereof literally describes a central bank.
    - netbioserror 3y ago

oilchange 3y ago

> In the end I'd say the US's broken legislative system has forced the fed to make some really tough decisions. But don't the fed and congress serve the same master? Congress is 'broken' for a reason. > The board of the fed saw congress's failure and figured "if this country can't execute fiscal policy well at least we can step in with expansionary monetary policy". No. The idea of using monetary policy over fiscal policy has been in use for decades. It's simpler, quicker and politically easier. > Came to kick them in the ass when covid rolled around That's when we had the expansionary fiscal policy. Where's the praise for congress? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND > but it was also arguably responsible for one the best decades of economic growth in human history. It was responsible for the biggest asset price increases ( stocks, housing prices, etc ) along with extreme wealth disparity, stagnant wages, low socio-economic advancement and the political chaos of obama-trump-biden. Crazy to see someone praise a bunch of unaccountable international bankers for their monetary policy especially when the monetary policy causes the economic problems in the first place. And then put down elected politicians for their lack of fiscal policy and ignore their expansionary fiscal policy during covid. Comment reads like FED PR.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago

How much of that growth is paper? Additionally, A lot of infrastructural maintenance and investment was deferred by communities that should have been taking advantage of low rates which will cost a premium in the future, likely compounded by higher rates.