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Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

This is clearly an oversimplification because the crisis of 2008 was met with extreme money printing which did not cause a burst of inflation and was reeled in with relative ease as the economy restored itself. If money printing were the variable then it should cause inflation every time but it does not.

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I think the GP is saying, 2008's money printing did cause a burst of inflation in stocks, which would have otherwise fallen even further. Measuring CPI by excluding assets like growth stocks hides the true effect of this money printing by glossing over what most already wealthy spend money on.

The extreme money printing (look at the Fed's balance sheet before and after 2008 [0]) showed up as inflation in house prices, which have ballooned in relation to wage income. This was done for the explicit purpose of keeping the biggest lenders flush (see Timothy Geithner's comments about 'deeply unfair', e.g. [1]) and is exactly what the GP is describing.

[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/geithner

> because the crisis of 2008 was met with extreme money printing which did not cause a burst of inflation

The inflation was very much visible in the places where the people who received the money spend their money (i.e. Wall Street). The money never made its way to Main Street, so naturally there would be no price pressure found there.

This time around the money was distributed to Main Street.

The money printing in 2008/9 was in response to a deflationary spiral. It didn’t cause inflation because it was mopped up by the deflationary conditions.

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