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Comment by malchow | Hacker News Reader

Deflationary means prices going down, not demand going down.

This inflation is real, and isn't just a COVID rebound. It's bad policies leasing to lack of business confidence leading to fear of the future.

If you are posting here, odds are you work in software. Seek out some friends who work in hardware and ask them what they are seeing.

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Prices did go down! Oil was negative last year.

Yes, you're right. I was only calling out that the parent poster incorrectly referred to the COVID related demand slump of 2020 as a deflationary period. It wasn't.

The poster didn't refer to the demand slump as a deflationary period. They referred to the time period where prices decreased as a deflationary period.

It wasn't deflationary because of the unprecedented stimulus.

It would have been.

Demand went down during covid, prices absouletly went down as well.

For hardware: Demand goes up, supply goes down, prices go up. Inflation, but not related to monetary policy.

>prices absouletly went down as well.

Where? On what? Prices everywhere stayed flat or increased.

At the beginning of the pandemic lots of prices went down especially rents in major cities and travel.

>Demand goes up

Do you think that free / easy money had anything to do with this?

I think it has more to do with individuals not having their traditional outlets for spending money (dining, bars, travel, etc) and chose to invest in covid-safe hobbies causing huge demand.

For GPUs yes, but the free money was called Bitcoin and completely unrelated to fed policy.

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