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Comment by rsmckinney | Hacker News Reader

On earth, a zero interest rate indicates a sick or at least stalled economy. The rate cannot be held at zero for much longer without risking a deeper debt via evermore unhealthy credit expansion, yet the consequences of raising it, even a little, will likely crush global markets as investors react etc. There is no question this economy is quite sick and has been breathing with aid of the Fed's iron lung so long that it probably can no longer sustain itself without resetting (hard).

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Also of note: US worker demographics do not substantiate the narrative that a recovery is going on. Jobs added are typically in the service industry, and a large percentage of those are part-time situations. Also the only age group that has added jobs since 2008 is the 55 and up cohort, which only further punishes the under-employed youth with significant student loan / other debt burdens and stalls the general progression into higher classes. I have my suspicions that the 55 and up group simply can't retire (no savings) or refuses to retire (standard of living).

Basically what I see are indicators the collapse will come around by way of massive defaults on student load debt. This will be combined with Federal Government idiocy promising Baby Boomers that the benefits will aways be there for them as a pandering for votes. Everybody knows full well the lower tiers of society and the working population are forced to make do with unapologetically low wages which aren't condusive to a healthy tax system, but there's no end to people voting against self-interest because they're clouded ideologically.

I'm not sure a total reset is this time or this year but probably next summer it'll be the focus of all the Presidential candidates.

We will retire and the Fed will end up bailing out the IOUs on the SS trust fund.

This is not a problem so long as it's done once. All SS money ends up strengthening the metric formerly known as M3, so it'll work out just fine.

The problem is the closely-held belief that There Must Be Suffering or we're not being responsible adults. The economy has been liquidity constrained ( outside of bubbles ) since 1980, with the odd 24 or 12 month period off.

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/3212.html

Look, even if the Baby Boomer cohort does retire and even if Social Security was funded properly, that leaves the stunning inflation of medical costs and significantly longer-than-forecasted life span of that population as yet one more entitlement economic choke-point that creates problems. There's also the closely held belief that "I paid into this system and I'm going to get everything I deserve!" which doesn't jibe with the decades of voting for people who mis-managed the finances. I don't forsee SS/entitlements "working out fine" barring drastic changes, such as collecting large swaths of destitute and poor Senior Citizens, busing them out to some reservation with centralized health care, and calling it a day.

The medical thing will resolve itself. The business model to handle it hasn't emerged yet. No manner of price jiggering is gonna add capacity to the medical system, so alternatives will be found.

Medicare will be a second-tier service. That's nearly inevitable. But nobody will do anything about this until they have to.

And frankly, longevity of Baby Boomers doesn't seem as likely to work out as it did for the WWII and Silent Generations.

I agree wholeheartedly about "mismanaged the finances" but this is the world we live in.

>The problem is the closely-held belief that There Must Be Suffering or we're not being responsible adults.

While this is quite true, there are underlying demographic factors to take into account. Namely, insofar as voting means anything at all, Generations X and Y together now outnumber the Baby Boomers among voting, working adults. This means that there is now an active, demographically-driven political conflict between the interest of incumbent creditors and the interest of an increasingly large majority of the voting, working adult public.

The real-nominal confusion again. Zero interest rates wouldn't indicate a stalled economy if deflation was at 4%. They would be a terrible thing if inflation was high. Neither is true right now, though.

By unhealthy credit expansion you mean unhealthy Fed balance sheet expansion?

Very little of the credit created on the balance sheet has actually entered the market.

Well I think there's some pretty clear correlation that numerous large companies have been using cheap credit in the bond market to buy back shares at a rapid pace (billions) and further inflate the status of the equities market. That's the cheap credit that isn't doing anything other than fleecing the non-investor class. It's simply financial engineering dependent on access to cheap credit, from what I understand.

Yes, buy backs has been a large contributor to indices heading upwards. A lot of these companies issue their own bonds at rates lower than even their dividends.

In the public bond market, how is lending fleecing the "non-investor class"?

How? Because the Federal Reserve enables the cheap credit pegged to a near-zero interest rate to institutions on Wall Street, who turn around and loan to large organizations through channels by which the Wall Street firms will receive compensation by way of financial transactions. If you add up all the pocketing that goes along before a single retail investor has a shot at a position, then you'll understand what I meant by the 'fleecing' comment. Well, that and go back to the first point that the Federal Reserve's ridiculously low interest rate for the past half-dozen years punishes Savers, who are not investors in the market directly (that's why they're called savers), and that's a very large population being taken advantage of by a sophisticated system.

No, savers are investors. And I agree that a low to zero interest rate is bad for savers.

Again, much of the money printed is just sitting on the balance sheets and haven't made it's way into the market.

You're saying that lenders who borrow from the Fed then lend to large organizations who do buybacks. Why does this hurt non-investors?

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