Comment by robinsoncrusue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robinsoncrusue | Hacker News Reader

While this entire spectacle is just nauseating, I am not going to shed a tear for Jerome Powell. This is a man that headed one of the most incompetent bunch in my lifetime. I remember the whole 2020/1 euphoria where things were just supposed to be "transitory" according to multiple Fed minutes. Lo and behold, until it was not. They had to tighten FAST, lot of layoffs happened because of that. You could argue the software industry never really recovered, AI is just a cope.

Reality is, these institutions have failed for a long time. It gave me a chuckle when I read the line "maximum unemployment and price stability". The official fed numbers for those are way off, you tell Americans spending >50% on their groceries compared to 2-3yrs ago that the inflation is 4%. Or unemployment rates for that matter. All the numbers are garbage, nothing means anything anymore.

If congress and Fed had a spine to enforce meritocracy, Jerome and all the "transitory" shenanigans would have been out long ago. And so there you have it. Officials with 10 years terms with zero accountability for their decisions with revolving doors to follow having big bucks consulting gigs for big banks awaiting moment they retire will say and do anything to preserve the self-serving institutions. Not its mandate. And cherry on top, if they are lucky to play out well, on their way out will get the glory of "serving the people and protecting the institutions".

>The official fed numbers for those are way off, you tell Americans spending >50% on their groceries compared to 2-3yrs ago the inflation is 4%. Or unemployment rates for that matter. All the numbers are garbage, nothing means anything anymore.

Where are your numbers that disprove the fed's numbers?

Don't you know, this is a vibes-based economy now? Numbers are meaningless when compared to feelings.

It's what Fox News says, so it must be true

Is Fox News actually saying that inflation and unemployment is higher? I thought the Trump Administration is claiming the opposite?

Not the person you're replying to, but I wonder what the true unemployment rate is when you exclude people who are doing gig work temporarily after they have been laid off from their career job.

>but I wonder what the true unemployment rate is when you exclude people who are doing gig work temporarily after they have been laid off from their career job.

That would presumably show up in personal/household income figures, but everything looks normal:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

They’re the wrong numbers and people misunderstand the numbers. The consumption basket for CPI (food) is determined by consumption surveys. Not desire or historical consumption. You can have less and lower quality food with a rising spend on food.

For example, food away from home is down. People cannot afford to go out to eat as much. Rather than reflect the higher cost of going out to eat, the consumption basket reduces the proportion of food away from home.

There are also hard limits on food spending. People have limited money. Instead what you seeing is a continued increase in SNAP and record food bank usage.

Make no mistake. The young family or median person is worse off with food security today despite spending more.

>For example, food away from home is down. People cannot afford to go out to eat as much. Rather than reflect the higher cost of going out to eat, the consumption basket reduces the proportion of food away from home.

He specifically mentions "groceries" so trying to retcon his argument to being about food away from home doesn't make any sense.

Moreover BLS publishes price indices for each item in the basket, so you can exclude the effect of the basket weights changing. Looking at the "Food Away from Home" category, that only rose 33% since the pandemic, not much higher than the overall inflation of 25.4%, and a far cry from ">50% on their groceries".

Are you mad that they didn't raise the federal funds rate sooner? And do you not understand how the CPI is calculated?

One of the major reasons that software was hit hard is that it grew accustomed to 10 years of insanely low interest rates that for some reason didn't cause inflation, and then when things started returning to historical averages, it couldn't continue in the same way.

Powell is only the chair, there's still 11 other goons on the board that votes to set policy.

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