Most informed economics are worse than a coinflip at predicting the future, so you might actually want to negate their opinions to get closer to the truth. Or at the very least, disregard a speciality who consistently gets things wrong
Anyone with a half a brain and some real world business knowledge would realize: Do you really want to be the guy who mentions, let alone put into motion, that losing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of receipts to make a negotiation situation worse, is a good idea? At that, selling bonds at a discount helps open up for allied nations to suck up those bonds to make more future money themselves. Thus powering the US negotiation side even more.
And did they play the bond game? Obviously not. They're not stupid. "I'm going to burn my money just to piss you guys off!"
Seriously, many public figure economists are idiots. Not all. The good one's public discourse gets reserved to small press geopolitical publications. Even then, they always acknowledge how fickle an economy can be and how easy it is to be blindsided.
So yea, high inflation in the next 5-10 years is a real possibility, especially as the stimulus bond payments start to mount.
Who's saying that?
> Matthew Yglesias notes[1] an uptick in Very Serious People warning that China might lose confidence in America and start dumping our bonds. He focuses on China’s motives, which is useful. But the crucial point, which he touches on only briefly at the end, is that whatever China’s motives, the Chinese wouldn’t hurt us if they dumped our bonds — in fact, it would probably be good for America.
* https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-china-debt-...
* The Fed who wants 2% inflation rate
* 12 months of inflation that were very low, dipping to 0.1%. [1]
* Re-opening of much of the economy
* Massive consumer spending
* Lots of issues with manufacturing & shipping over the past few months
* Drought effecting crop prices [2]
I don't think that counts as a coin flip.
1 - https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...
* The largest annual increase of the money supply in the history of the US, far larger than even WWII, with no end in sight.
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#Link_with_inflati...
Milton Friedman and Monetarists were wrong: velocity is not constant, and it does affect inflation.
> Indeed, from 1982 to 1985, Friedman repeat- edly predicted a major revival of inflation that never occurred. In 1982 he predicted 8 percent inflation for 1983; the outcome was around 4 percent (FORT, 03/19/84). In July 1983, Friedman wrote, “We shall be fortunate indeed if we escape either a return to double-digit inflation or renewed recession in 1984” (NW, 07/25/83). In August 1983, he said, “U.S. inflation rates will rise appreciably in 1984, although it’s not yet determined where they’ll go from there” (TSN, 08/30/83). In April 1984, Friedman said, “I believe [the CPI] will be rising in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 percent in 1985.”33 Even in November 1985, Friedman said that “Inflation is not dead. It will emerge once again and will be higher next year than it is this year. We almost surely are currently at the bottom of this inflationary episode and are likely to be starting up again” (NYDN, 11/13/85). Defying these predictions, inflation was consistently below 5 percent in every month from 1983 to 1986; moreover, apart from a brief uptick in early 1984, inflation continued to decline after 1982, and was lower in 1986 than it was in 1985.
* PDF: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/revie...