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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

"... how grifters came to be called visionaries."

Yes.

Near-zero interest rates enabled the creation of "successful" companies that didn't actually make money. That era is coming to a close.

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>that era is coming to a close

negative interest rates seem more likely than higher interest rates

> Near-zero interest rates enabled the creation of "successful" companies that didn't actually make money. That era is coming to a close.

Rates seem to be going down again. What makes you think near-zero interest rates are going away?

Inflation

That's putting a lot of faith in central banks. The current heads of those banks, at least in the US and EU, have telegraphed pretty clearly that they are willing to let inflation run hot for better or worse.

The wealthy deserve their low interest loans. Then the manna they generate will trickle down... Somehow.

Loans are for people without money. High interest is good for people with money who loan it out.

The wealthy only use the loans when it makes more sense to keep money earning returns somewhere else.

The wealthy are using loans backed by stocks to avoid capital gains taxes.

> Loans are for people without money

This is false. Filthy rich people are taking billions in loans right now because there is a chance the dollar crashes and they might have to repay their loans for way less than they have taken them.

Read the rest of my post before replying.

> Read the rest of my post before replying.

Pretty sure you modified your message after I replied to you at first place. This isn't very honest.

Until something terrible happens they will keep rates low. The only people who care about high inflation are people who have salary jobs with low raise potential and people on fixed incomes like annuities. Those people have far less political influence than the rich. Obviously, there may be second order effects that cause another reason to raise rates, but that is TBD

is it me or has the word "grift" seen a large uptick in the last few years.

I used to really like this word now I see it all over the place, I wouldn't call anything what Gavin did a grift ... or a small time swindle.

There has definitely been an uptick. You see it quite a bit in lefty and progressive media -- and I say this as a frequent consumer of such media. It seems like the term has lost a lot of its meaning and has become a synonym for "person I don't like." You especially often see it applied to someone from the other political side of the aisle who joined the media after leaving politics.

According to Google Trends there's been a rise in the usage in 2020 (similar to 2005) that's leveled off now. Similar for grifter but a lesser rise especially compared to a bigger one in 2010.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=grifter

Isn't google trends the wrong tool to use for this, since it only represents search traffic? If you want to compare usages in written works you'd need to use ngram viewer or something.

Looks to have been a recent uptick if you put any store in Google Trends:

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=grift,...

The rise of YouTube and Patreon has made grifting a more profitable and common phenomenon.

How are YouTube and Patreon grifting? People watching someone's videos and someone making optional donations because they like some creative seems more or less the opposite of "grifting."

They aren't necessarily grifting, but they give a platform for grifters. That's not necessarily a bad thing. A more open media environment is worth the cost of a few bad actors.

I mean, telephones are a platform for grifters.

They are, just not as profitable as YouTube and Patreon.

I guess whoever wrote this didn’t know about the 80s and the 90s.

I find this comment particularly amusing given what Animats aka John Nagle is most known for...

Appropriate management of the money supply by the Fed also created the best economic circumstances for the middle and working classes in 20 years.

The current setup isn’t the Fed acting in isolation. The federal government is now using the zero percent interest rate to distribute cash via direct payments to workers on an unprecedented scale.

You could argue for cutting out the middlemen and simply having the fed issue credit cards.

Yes, fiscal policy is important as well. It's also probably true that the federal government has overdone it a bit as we're now seeing supply side driven inflation. These sorts of things are rarely handled perfectly.

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