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Comment by fourteenfour | Hacker News Reader

The inflation rate has come down significantly from a huge spike in 2022. Seems like we are making progress.

Also, what’s the end game? Current rates are not that bad relative to historical rates.

The end game is the fed delivering on their sub 2% promise. Anything less would cede their credibility, which they will need in future crises.

I believe its no longer "sub" and now their mandate is just maintaining close to 2%

I know that the fed (Powell?) has been suggesting that 2% should be a long term average, but I took that largely to forgive their performance thus far. If they want credibility in the market long-term, they'll have to demonstrate they can return below 2% before lowering rates.

Not happening without a recession.

We heard that all through 2021-22 (or thereabouts) and it didn't happen. Why would it happen now?

Exactly my point! :)

...but if it does happen, inflation will come down, too.

Going right back to ZIRP will cede the Fed's credibility. Primary monetary creation needs to be done by the Treasury spending money for deliberate productive purposes, rather than given away as cheap undirected loans to banks so they can continue pumping up leveraged asset bubbles.

> Going right back to ZIRP

Sub 2 percent inflation, not sub 2 percent real interest rates.

The fed doesn't cause inflation, nor can the fed cure it. They can only react to it.

The way inflation is measured has radically changed over time. You can't realistically compare current numbers to those in the 70s. The same redefinition issue affects unemployment data. The only people I know trying to do apples-to-apples comparisons are the guys running https://www.shadowstats.com

The deficit has come down, too.

https://epicforamerica.org/the-economy/is-inflation-the-resu...

Can you state your hypothesis more explicitly? Because a trivial reading of the numbers show the inflation rate coming down (a lot) while the deficit has gone up.

See the link. The deficit has come down, and then the inflation came down. Figures 1A and 2.

https://epicforamerica.org/the-economy/is-inflation-the-resu...

If you graph economic progress on top of all this isn't it just saying that governments spend more when economic shocks happen?

Other countries are pretty instructive as well. For instance Germany had inflation during a period when they had a budget surplus (for over a decade prior to 2019).

> isn't it just saying that governments spend more when economic shocks happen?

And that the revenue may be lower. Look at 2008 and 2009. Major increases in unemployment which also resulted in reduced revenue. Which created a double whammy, spending increased because the social safety net did what it was supposed to do (carry people through tougher times) and revenue dropped because there were fewer people paying taxes and many people reduced spending (beyond just those who lost their jobs). Then the deficit drops while the employment rate increases and revenues increases while spending again decreases commensurately.

Germany was part of the EU, and use Euros for currency. What matters is the deficit of the EU, not Germany in particular.

It's like a deficit in Kansas does not result in inflation in the US, because Kansas does not have its own currency.

    Deficit = Spending - Revenue

You keep saying deficit. Do you mean the trade deficit or the governmental deficit?

[edit later after parent edit] Ok I think you are saying governmental spending deficit. And your link doesn’t go nearly so far as to say that you must account for every governments spending in the EU to account for this.

Do you have any other links? This is a much more expansive view on the relationship between deficits and inflation than I’ve read before.

By what measure? Not to mention that reducing inflation isn't going to roll back the massive price increases that have hurt consumers on staple items.

This is what happens when you have monopolies and oligopolies doing what they please (after getting massive handouts in the form of tax cuts from Trump... surely with more on the way).

The interest-rate hikes have failed; and yet here we are, waving our hands as if helpless.

The measure is the inflation rate. Prices are not going to drop much or at all but income has also risen.

Inflation rate of what? Inflation can be measured against different "market baskets." Consider this huge defect in the commonly-cited one:

"Core inflation is the change in the costs of goods and services but does not include those from the food and energy sectors. Food and energy prices are exempt from this calculation because their prices can be too volatile or fluctuate wildly." - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/coreinflation.asp

And yet the cost of food is probably the most often-cited one in any news story about inflation... unless the winner is the other statistically-omitted one, fuel.

> Consider this huge defect in the commonly-cited one:

There are multiple types of CPI because they measure different things, and they each have pluses and minuses.

The reason why Core CPI is useful is illustrated by the orange and blue lines in the first graph:

* https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2587/inflation/difference...

Good luck trying to policy with the orange (non-Core, which has food and energy) line. Or the red line in Chart 1 of:

* https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/doc...

Food and energy are heavily dependent on commodity prices, which can swing widely: one month the Fed would be cutting by 3% and the very next month raising by 4% if they followed non-Core CPI (versus PCE).

The Bank of Canada, who sets rates in Canada based on StatCan data, looks are three different CPI measures:

* https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/indicators/capacity-and-in...

* https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/statistical-programs/document/2...

Interesting, for sure. I guess we need some way to include these volatile elements in a sane manner, which allows for sustained increases (or decreases) to register while smoothing the wide swings.

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