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Comment by propernoun | Hacker News Reader

> A reminder to us that psychopaths are running the world economy.

Labeling Powell/the Fed as a psychopath simply because they're turning one of the very few if not only inflation control knobs they have seems extreme.

A psychopath would have done this randomly or at an illogical time (say by raising rates at the outset of the Great Recession). Just because you don't like the outcome of a decision doesn't make the decision maker a psychopath, more so when they agree that they wish there was a better way.

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They are psychopaths because they have no concern for the misery they cause. If it were themselves or their families who would have their lives ruined, rather than 1.2 million innocent Americans, they wouldn't be so quick to enact this policy. A policy only supported by very dubious research, mind you. They are no better than the generals that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, Vladimir Putin, or any other psychopaths to full of shit to give a damn about the well-being of others.

They do this knowing taking no action will be far far worse for everyone. We saw what a decade of stagflation looked like and it’s much worse than limited job losses. Even those who lose jobs will be better off with a short recession rather than costs inflating away their earnings.

The actions taken in 2007 and 2008 were largely because of how terrified decision makers were of the Great Depression (Bernanke in particular was a deep student of that era and saw lots of similarities).

The Fed’s mandate has always been to control inflation and promote employment. The goals sometimes oppose each other. There’s no evidence they have stepped aside from this mandate. Employment was so prioritized by the Fed for so long that their actions promoting it probably fueled some of this inflation, and led to them to not fighting the inflation sooner. Hardly the actions of Vladimir Putin.

No, they don't know anything. The idea that unemployment and inflation is related comes from a theoretical model called NAIRU and promoted by neoliberal economists. The model has zero empirical evidence. In other words, these psychopaths could as well torture hamsters or dance rain dances and it would have the same impact on inflation as what they are doing now. People blindly believing them, as you do, are no different from Russians who believe that the war in Ukraine is necessary to protect "the Motherland". But when it is your livelihood on the line, you will change your tune, just like Russians who rather not themselves be drafted.

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