Fed Says Inflation Progress Has Stalled, Extends Wait-and-See Stance
wsj.com
wsj.com
https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...
That's why Japan has been trying to fight deflation for decades.
People hear this and think "everyone was broke", but there literally was just no money. We hadn't fully figured out modern monetary policy at that point, and the old ideas of austerity reigned supreme for policymakers.
And yet, no. No one spoke of austerity. The government wasn't austere. Hoover's Treasury Sec., Andrew Mellon, wanted to "liquidate, liquidate, liquidate" in 1929, but that didn't happen. More government largesse than Roosevelt went with would not have resolved things, not all other things being equal.
The Fed was very hands off in the early 1930s:
> […] At the onset of the Great Depression in 1929–1930, the Fed maintained a “hands-off” approach, believing the economy simply needed to “wring out its excesses.” This is somewhat ironic in that Fed policy itself greatly contributed to the financial excesses of the 1920s. Nevertheless, the Fed failed to recognize the nature of the economy.
> When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the Fed’s instinct was to do little and let the economy and markets correct. But the Fed seemed to have no sense of how big the credit bubble from the 1920s was. Consequently, from 1929–1933, the Fed remained committed to a tight monetary policy. Under the gold standard then in force, when the gold balances held by the government contracted, the money supply did so as well. Faced with the increasing economic turmoil, US businesses and the public at large trusted gold more than paper currency. Overseas investors, fearing a potential devaluation of the dollar, preferred gold too. This created a gold drain. As the Fed’s gold stocks declined, the United States unwittingly reduced credit in the economy. Over the 1929–1933 period, the US money supply contracted sharply, declining by roughly one third between 1929 and 1933, and the country experienced its worst ever downturn, with unemployment soaring to roughly 25%.
* https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2015/09/17/the-ghost...
It was the interventionist policies of new New Deal and its various spending and jobs programs that helped the recovery begin. As well as getting off the gold standard:
* https://delong.typepad.com/delong_long_form/2013/10/the-grea...
If you think things are bad with government intervention and regulation, you may wish to examine history about things before it became a thing:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1896
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907
IMHO the (US) financial system has been much more stable with more of a government / Fed hands-on approach.
Certainly there were crashes (1987) and bubbles (1999), but that was more on the private sector side. At least one problem was due to not enough oversight:
The key thing was the Fed was (early on) complying with how the gold standard worked, which is a finite amount of cash being available, and only being able to be increased by having more of the shiny stuff.
> When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the Fed’s instinct was to do little and let the economy and markets correct. But the Fed seemed to have no sense of how big the credit bubble from the 1920s was. Consequently, from 1929–1933, the Fed remained committed to a tight monetary policy. Under the gold standard then in force, when the gold balances held by the government contracted, the money supply did so as well. Faced with the increasing economic turmoil, US businesses and the public at large trusted gold more than paper currency. Overseas investors, fearing a potential devaluation of the dollar, preferred gold too. This created a gold drain. As the Fed’s gold stocks declined, the United States unwittingly reduced credit in the economy. Over the 1929–1933 period, the US money supply contracted sharply, declining by roughly one third between 1929 and 1933, and the country experienced its worst ever downturn, with unemployment soaring to roughly 25%.
* https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2015/09/17/the-ghost...
This is one of the reason why the gold standard (or any "hard" currency) is a bad idea:
* https://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2016/12/14/why-a-...
The sooner the US (and other countries) got off the gold standard, the sooner their economies started to recover:
> In the end, recovery from the Great Depression does not begin until countries give up on the combination of the Bagehot Rule and of commitment to sound gold-standard finance. Those countries that have central banks willing to print up enough money so that people are willing to spend it--it is when you adopt such policies that your economy begins to recover. If you don’t, you become France, which sticks to the gold standard all the way up to 1937, and never gets a recovery. When World War II begins, Nazi Germany’s production--equal to France's in 1933--had doubled between 1933 and 1939. French production had fallen by 15%.
* https://delong.typepad.com/delong_long_form/2013/10/the-grea...
There was a misstep in 1936 when there was pressure to raise rates and also to reduce spending due to deficits, and so rates were raised and austerity was enacted… and the economy tanked again.
Inflation/deflation happens when there is a mismatch between the supply of money and the value of goods and services in the economy. This mismatch usually happens because the central bank prints deficit money.
Deflation in the 1930s happened because the Fed went the other way, refusing to create money. This continued until the late 30s when the Fed changed course, and (you guessed it) produced lots of inflation.
[1] "In Defense of Deflation": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40206205
The treasury prints money. Remember when Janet Yelled said she is ready to mint a one trillion USD coin in case it is needed to avoid the debt ceiling.
What the Fed does is a duration transformation. Commercial banks can deposit US treasuries at the central bank and receive a claim on those treasures in the form of liquid central bank reserves. This is done because people keep holding more and more short term duration deposits in their checking accounts or at brokerage accounts. Buying a 10 year treasury with deposits that only have a 1 day duration is quite insane. This means that in practice whatever deposits you are keeping in your account are missing from the economy.
The US federal government can run a deficit and it can run it regardless of the financing conditions. It will merely pay an exorbitant interest rate if it chooses to do so.
Here is a loosely related paper:
https://www.elsevier.es/en-revista-investigacion-economica-1...
In an equilibrium economy, the expected net money supply is always zero, that is, every dollar in the money supply is offset by a dollar in debt. So called inside money.
If the neoclassical theory is true, then attempts at extracting seigniorage would immediately be spotted and no inflation could ever occur. The inverse is also true. If the government artificially restricted the money supply, people would find alternative means of providing themselves with the ability to exchange. So the expectation is that the government has zero power or ability to influence the economy with monetary policy. The only reason why it would have the ability to do so, is because it has made those alternatives illegal.
It's a euphemism for the modern way of simply issuing more debt, and more debt to cover existing debt.
Exactly: In periods like the 1930's, central must lend to banks at lower rates and buy fixed-income securities with newly created money as necessary, in order to prevent a deflationary loop. In the 1930's the Fed did the opposite, sending the economy into an even more painful deflationary spiral.
Now almost certain it's not great for humanity in a long term view (less investments in the future etc) but I'm not sure it has to be worse for the present generation.
Any link you can share?
Edit: Google "disinflation wealth redistribution" provides some relevant results
Is that really true? Deflation sounds conclusively worse. Everyone starts to hoard money instead of spend it, and the economy goes into a tailspin. Any debt you pay back is with dollars that are worth less. Most anyone in debt, which is a lot of people, should prefer inflation.
Total credit card interest and fees paid by Americans are up 47% from the high of 2019 •
Overall economic output continues to increase, but it drains so quickly, and increasingly to depreciating assets.
Of the young adults I know, I ask if they do even have a rough budget. Only two couples said yes, none of the singles or other couples. I know many are paying large sums to interest on consumer debt, with student loans looming for later.
I don’t have any other statistics, and now will seek them. It raises the question at least, how might we assess the benefit achieved thanks in part to loans to the majority of households over the past 50-100 years?
• https://wallethub.com/edu/how-much-americans-pay-in-credit-c...
A debtless economy would be an absolute nightmare.
The interests of a working person who rents is different from a working person who owns their own home, whose interests are different from a residential real estate investor's, whose interests are different from a business owner's, whose interests are different from a venture capitalist's, whose interests are different from a stock broker's.
In the depths of the financial crisis in 2008/9 I remember Bernanke saying he would fly helicopters and drop bags of money if it came to that in order to fight deflation taking hold.
Huh? just literally print more money.
>That money will not end up in the hands of those who need it.
Yes, but it's irrelevant for this discussion.
Ok, imagine people start hoarding money, where are they going to store money? In Banks. Which would use that money to invest in things, like always.
Modern economics are nothing like economics in 1930, but somehow we still base our science on that era.
No, people only invest if they see a return. If the return is too low they will simply hold onto the money since interest rates can't go negative too deeply. Your idea only works in a fantasy land with mandated equilibrium. In the real world people don't care if there is an equilibrium or not.
I'm talking about banks. That's literally their business. You know, to lend money.
> If the return is too low they will simply hold onto the money since interest rates can't go negative too deeply.
Who talked about interest rate? Why banks cant use THE MONEY THEY HAVE to lend/invest?
Their business is to make money. If the economy is in the toilet, it is usually because there is no demand, and if there is no demand businesses and individuals do not need loans to expand and operate, so no one is asking for credit, so banks have no one to lend to.
The banks don't want the/your money: while a savings account is an asset to you, the other side of the ledger is a liability for the bank. And if they are to provide x% to the saver, they have to earn >x% to break even (adding overhead), never mind make money.
Just a little while ago in Europe, there was all sorts of excess savings (especially in Germany) with no places to invest the piles of cash piling up, so you get negative interest rates on savings accounts:
* https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/eu-says-danish-banks-probably-ca...
* https://archive.ph/U8Ds6 / https://www.wsj.com/articles/banks-in-germany-tell-customers...
> Why banks cant use THE MONEY THEY HAVE to lend/invest?
This is not how the banking system works, and has not been for decades. Tobin called the lend-savings model the "Old View" in 1963:
* https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cowles-discussion-paper-...
Please stop using and talking about the money multiplier, as it just muddles up people's understanding about reality:
* https://www.pragcap.com/r-i-p-the-money-multiplier/
* https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2021...
The way that the bank system works is that banks first create a loan and second look for reserves:
* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...
* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/132
The amount of savings that a bank holds has nothing to do with anything. There are entire countries without reserve requirements:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_requirement#Countries_...
The middle class grows when there is stability and neither inflation nor deflation. The constant instability we see only benefits the capital holders who can profit off both the ups and downs.
I’m not sure how many more years of a quasi government organization (that is far too buddy buddy with major capital holders) imposing a tax on existing (inflation) we’ll have to suffer before we get a central bank that exists for the American people and not capital that operates in America.
The USA is arguably the most capitalistic country/culture/society on Earth, and you're wondering how long it will be until the USA fundamentally changes the core mechanism of its banking to be inherently socialistic?
I can't say when, but it's not happening without a violent revolution that would make 1790s France look like a children's fairy tale.
BS.
Deflation means that (on average) people can't afford to buy goods. They simply don't have money to do that!
Japan has essentially zero GDP growth since 1990-s as a result.
I'm pretty sure Japan never had big unemployment problems, so your claim is BS.
>Japan has essentially zero GDP growth since 1990-s as a result.
GDP is a useless metric, only useful for politicians to brag about their "achievements".
Japan is solving unemployment by essentially creating BS jobs, like people standing on a corner and holding a sign saying that there's a corner nearby. Meanwhile, good high-paying jobs are extremely hard to get into, and are very stressful.
Remember when it turned out during Fukushima accident that lots of people normally hired to work on the power plant, were essentially unqualified day laborers? That's why.
Japan is NOT in a good place economically. They are essentially wasting millions of lifetimes of human capital.
https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/specific-country-data#/coun...
When we had stagflation both inflation and unemployment was far higher. Please learn from history.
Edit: think I misread your comment. You're not referencing the current deflation in Japan but rather some inflation in the past?
"Stagflation" is a particularly weird direction to take, as by definition it requires a contraction of the economy ("less stuff to buy with the same money supply == inflation"), and both GDP and population growth remain positive in the USA.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-census-estimates-show... ("Brookings: New census estimates show a tepid rise in U.S. population growth, buoyed by immigration")
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/us-births-drop-2023 ("The U.S. fertility rate in 2023 amounted to about 1.62 births per woman — well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1 that would allow a generation to completely replace itself.")
You keep doing this thing where you cite headlines that cover half of your idea and then claiming that they support the whole, and they just don't. Yes, US birth rates are dropping (among both native-born and immigrant populations). No, that doesn't have anything to do with immigration per se, nor is it response to the (correct) point that the population is growing.
There absolutely has been a surge in immigration (asylum seekers/economic migrants) recently [1] [2] [3], this is a fact, and the current administration is aware enough to be contemplating taking action to stem it [4]. Your source cites this, snippet below this paragraph.
"Recent increases in encounters of asylum seekers and other migrants at U.S. borders reflect a number of factors, including worsening political and economic conditions in origin countries; the uneven repercussions of the pandemic; the war in Ukraine; and the perception that U.S. policy has become more welcoming."
We can haggle over what words (immigration) mean, but the numbers are straightforward, are they not?
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-e...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/arizona-border-wall-breaches-asyl...
[3] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...
[4] https://www.axios.com/2024/04/10/biden-border-executive-orde...
You literally failed to show numbers showing a surge in immigration though. I provided numbers that show (over a longer time period) the opposite. Trying to proxy another measurement (like "encounters") is analysis. And you're welcome to do it. But you aren't doing that either and are throwing links around instead.
Please don't, it cheapens the site. The reason you can't find any links that say what you want them to is because what you believe is wrong, and people who actually do the analysis you're skipping are coming to a different conclusion.
> There's been no "surge" in immigration, except in the very short term where migration caught up with the backlog due to the pandemic.
> You literally failed to show numbers showing a surge in immigration though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-03/us-jobs-r... | https://archive.today/MSWd3
> Nonfarm Payrolls: While economists generally see payroll gains stepping down in April from the first quarter’s booming pace, a 240,000 increase would still be above the average pace over the second half of 2023 — and is the most optimistic estimate since October 2022. Many have cited surging immigration as a reason why employment growth remains so strong even at a point in the business cycle when it would be natural to expect slower hiring.
> “Elevated immigration boosted labor supply by roughly 80k per month last year, relative to normal, and we expect a continued tailwind averaging 50k per month this year,” Goldman Sachs economist Spencer Hill wrote in a May 2 note. “Given the still-elevated level of job openings and the ramp-up of the spring hiring season, we assume many of these individuals found jobs during the April survey period, including in the construction and leisure sectors.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-29/how-immig... | https://archive.today/0PJzM
> The recent surge in immigration to the US has led many economists to boost their forecasts. Now they’re looking for more signs of its impact in the data.
> Growth in employment has continually surprised to the upside in recent years, running at a pace formerly deemed as unsustainable. Economists have coalesced around population growth as a key explanation after a recent Congressional Budget Office report estimated higher immigration than previously thought.
> With over a million people entering the country each year, it stands to reason that a bigger population will increase demand for housing and a wide range of other goods and services. For now, some of the places forecasters are looking to gauge the impact may not provide obvious answers: consumer spending data, for example, aren’t broken down by demographic.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/15/texas-greg-abbott-in...
"But this corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home. This must be added to the legislative agenda to protect Texas families.”
(Rent/cost if ownership are fairly big contributions to current inflation)
And when I say empty unit, I would include commercial in that list. Land that is sitting unused, that is zoned to be commercial, industrial, residential, should be taxed at a higher rate to encourage it's sale and/or development for it's zoned purpose.
It's hard to say how discouraging capital from entering the market will decrease prices. If companies are willing to put up capital to rent homes that should theoretically increase the supply of residences available for rent. You could argue price fixing or other issues are at stake but it seems more complicated than a single line issue.
Typically single family homes aren't good targets for rental so we may see this whole experiment fail naturally. Many areas the math just doesn't work. The target price when this idea started was like a $200-250,000 home. There aren't many ways to get one of those right now. As you go up in price it's harder and harder to find a tenant that would prefer to rent.
I think Abbott is just trying to blow the wind in a different direction as one of the causes of real estate price explosion in big cities in Texas is due to migration of people due to corporate tax incentives he is behind which is a good thing for those that already own but bad for those that don't.
The question is how many folks are lying and claiming homestead when they shouldn't be? When they get caught what is the penalty for doing so? I recently read that Florida and neighboring states are sharing homestead informatoin and finding who's cheating on taxes (claim homestead when they shouldn't be). The question is, is the risk worht the reward for cheating? If the chance of getting caught is small, and the punishment for cheating isn't bad enough, people will continue to take their chances.
It's irrational malaise
Edit: all three are inflationary expansion followed by hangover.
It's absolutely true that there are people coming out of school with humanities degrees that in previous generations would have guaranteed them a professional career, and finding they don't any more. But then there aren't nearly enough nursing graduates, and those of us here in the tech community are living way beyond what our parents would have expected from a "computer?!" education. And come next generation, we may find that some of us have been replaced by AI and our kids will want training in prompt engineering or whatever.
But "no job in my field" isn't the same as "no reasonable job available".
"The waitlist for Ventura College’s nursing program sits at four-and-a-half years, according to Sandra Melton, the director of the school of nursing and allied health. The nursing school at Cal State Fullerton had to decide which of 8,000 applicants would take 100 available spots in its fall 2023 entering class"
https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/college-be...
(Well, unless you deliberately spin the numbers: there was indeed a local peak in November of last year that we haven't quite reached yet, so technically it's been "shrinking" over the last four data points. But then it's been "growing" over 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7...)
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/27/labor-shortages-air-traffic...
https://www.axios.com/2022/01/21/workers-labor-market-hiring
1.8M people in the US over the age of 55 die every year. Roughly have of that cohort are in the labor force. 3.6M baby boomers retire every year, 10k per day. 4M people turn 18 every year, slowly aging into labor force participation.
Fed will eventually fold on 2-2.5% being the target rate. Closer to 3-4% neutral rate factoring in structural changes. Gotta save face and prove you tried.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-labor-costs-increase-m... ("Growth in US labor costs accelerates in first quarter")
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/neutral-rate-debate-resur... ("Neutral rate debate resurfaces as US economy refuses to crack")
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/01/us-job-market-openings-jolt... ("Why the job market has stayed so hot for so long")
Then you came in with a bunch of vaguely related stuff about workforce size and interest rates and inflation pontification. But not one of those articles substantiates the point to which I responded, nor the one you seem to be trying to make via proxy. If you want to cite a dozen sources for analysis reasons, you need to do the analysis and not just throw links at people on the internet.
[1] It isn't.
[2] It isn't.
The Fed is trying to slow the economy while the White House is trying to stoke it.
The Fed reached their limits on what they can do, and we need to the White House to slow down.
PS just like they missed the window for hikes, now they miss the window for cuts, again