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Comment by bwb | Hacker News Reader

Get ready for a fun ride my friends :)

Fun ride =

Oil is going up, possibly for a long time, which will have a big inflationary effect on everything. And it appears the USA government has lost the conflict it started and effectively given control over key oil delivery channels to Iran. Not to mention Saudia facing real issues from rebel groups / Yemen (simplification).

Government debt is high in several key economies, and the bond market is being saturated with AI-related bonds, as well as possibly people finally tired of lending the USA/France/UK money at low rates and demanding higher ones. And with higher interest rates and bonds rolling over it means more and more money going to pay for the debt, rather than core services.

Wild cards lurking in the bushes... AI, AGI, RSI.

And yonder you have a nuclear power floundering; its only source of hard currency is being rightfully degraded, and its leadership delusional.

And the one to watch IMO... Russian wheat export ability: wheat prices are up considerably, and combined with inflation from oil, this is the kind of stuff that creates waves of political change like the Arab Spring.

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This is the right move. Inflationary pressures due to high oil prices and tariffs are not going away anytime soon. All the economic numbers point to a need for a rate hike. Not doing so has a much larger effect on the financial system than a 25 bps rate hike. Stagflation is a bigger risk to the economy.

Counterintuitively the rate hike can help lower things like mortgage rates by stabilizing the bond yields.

We'll continue through the depression we've started since 2008. (GDP growth should be closer to 3.5%-5%, but we haven't really escaped sub-2% since 2008) - our GDP has been depressed by at least 1-2% growth since that crisis, and I think a large part of it has been the inflationary cycle we started and never stopped.

The wars already put us into too much debt, Obama continued it for 8 years (granted, the deficit slowly went down, but it wasn't fixed). Trump and Biden did a huge disservice to the debt (but neither really cared much about it), and now I fear the path Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have laid will not be easily fixed.

I agree with you. We are still paying for 2008, and compounded the problem with Covid stimuli. I sure wish we would just rip the band aid off at this point, but it might already be too late. The global economy is jacked, China needs everyone to be consumers, and that well is running dry, globally.

GDP growth is never going to be that high again. GDP growth is just per-capita GDP growth (1-1.5% per year) + population growth (used to be 1%, now is 0% or slightly negative). GDP growth of 1-1.5% will be normal going forward and could even go lower if population decline is at -.5% per year, for example.

I did list GDP growth per capita[0], so that already was accounting for population changes.

Having said that, you are depressingly very correct. A negative population growth will cause the post-2008 depression to continue even longer, and probably more agressively.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?end=2...

Definitely the right move, 100% agree.

I don't think that mortgage rates are going to go down; I think they will go up. Just my opinion.

I also think oil is about to go up even more, maybe for multiple years, which is going to be inflationary on everything we do. But, could be really good for solar growth, electrification, and electric cars.

Re: mortgage rates

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/09/16/heres-wha...

Remind me in 6 months :)

I'll be you; they are higher this time.

That wouldn’t be a great way to measure it. I’m only talking about the fed rates, how it impacts the bond market and therefore the mortgage rates. If someone decides to nuke the oil infrastructure of the world tomorrow, this rate hike doesn’t matter and your hopes and dreams of a low mortgage rate get nuked along with the oil infrastructure.

This comment isn't helpful. Please explain for those of us without a degree in economics.

bwb is likely referring to the likelihood that this will send Trump into a tremendous rage.

I can't wait to see the next Truth Social post.

hah i know, his own man raised rates, he will probably send the military out to get Walsh

Higher rates means USG will need to print more money to pay for $40TN debt which will increase inflation which will force higher rates.

The debt is owed by the treasury, fed prints the money. What you’re describing is not how the monetary system works.

The Fed purchased Treasury securities during COVID QE. Those securities had low yields and cash reserves were created during those purchases.

Those cash reserves are held by banks which the Fed funds rate pays interest on (what was hiked).

Meanwhile the fixed rate debt from QE remains the same.

Inflation is high, so interest rates need to go up to try to slow that, but the economy isn't doing amazing already, and higher interest rates won't help that.

Not to mention the US debt is _high_ as hell and bond yields mean that's more expensive.

And the country is run by a broken fool who has no interest or ability to fix any of that.

> And the country is run by a broken fool who has no interest or ability to fix any of that.

Trump will be gone in three years, but you'll still have an electorate that wants more free stuff while also getting tax cuts. There is zero appetite for fiscal reform in the U.S. The geometric growth rate of U.S. debt has been consistent since 2010 and will remain so when AOC is President: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-debt-does-the-us-have/...

You really really just need to raise taxes. Just find a way to sell that to the public (focus on the rich or large corporations or whatever outgroup you want basically)

Disagree. We have a spending problem, not a tax revenue problem. No matter how much the govt brings in, it will want to spend an increasing amount more.

Is there anything that can't be solved by bigger government?

Our budget deficit is $2 trillion. To close it, you need to significantly raise taxes on the fattest part of the income curve, which is the top 25%. They have $10 trillion of income. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in.... An across the board 200 basis point increase would close the deficit. That would raise their taxes to 38% at the low end to 46% at the high end, which is perfectly fine.

The problem is that the top 25% isn’t an “out group” in either coalition. You have Facebook PMs who vote blue and guys who own a small plumbing company who vote red both making $1 million+ annually and neither wanting their own taxes to go up. Then there are the guys below them looking up. Over 10% of the country will be in the top 1% of earners at some point in their life. So the guys pulling in a few hundred K as a senior engineer or construction manager don’t want their taxes to go up either.

> taking half of someone’s money is totally fine

Okay. Then let’s also reduce what’s spent welfare/benefits by a similar amount, at least we’re not taking money they worked for.

No, U.S. benefits are at a typical level for an OECD country. The problem is the taxes. U.S. taxation is only 25% of GDP, versus 40% in western Europe. We could raise taxes $3 trillion annually and still be at the level of one of the more responsible European countries like the U.K.

The wealthy have been taxed appropriately in the past, we just need to do it again. There is precedent.

The Peak Year (1944): The 94% rate applied to taxable income over $200,000 (which included a 3% regular tax and a 91% surtax). That $200,000 would be incomes over $3.8 Million today.

The High-Tax Era: Top marginal rates remained above 90% for two decades, spanning from 1944 through 1963.

This is supposedly the era that made America "great".

Okay, but how much tax revenue was raised from those high marginal rates? The top rate is meaningless without knowing how much money that actually brings in for the government. That’s the key part of the analysis for purposes of this discussion.

Aside from a brief blip during WWII, federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have been stable at around 17% of GDP, going back to 1950: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S. Those high marginal rates never actually raised very much revenue. To close the deficit, we have to get that 17% number up to 23%.

To raise revenue, you need to lower the threshold at which high marginal rates kick in so that you actually capture the fat part of the tax base. About half of all income is earned by people making $100k-800k. That’s around where the heavy tax burden falls in every western european country.

> Over 10% of the country will be in the top 1% of earners at some point in their life

Though most of them only for one year due to temporary revenue, so it's not that rational.

At peak career ages, the 75th percentile household income is almost $200k and the 90th percentile is almost $300k. That’s exactly the range you need to tax. Across all ages, households earning between $150k and $800k earn half of all income—$7 trillion.

Yay stagflation!

It’s worse than no ability to fix it — he caused a large part of it for unclear reasons

Covid? Half the money printed happened under his watch the first admin. Biden continued the other half. Now we have yet another war to make matters worse. What are you proposing be done to fix it?

Well I sure wouldn't have started another war.

> he caused a large part of it for unclear reasons

Technically it was Besset, but Trump gave him the reigns.

The purpose seems to be to radically debase the dollar and setup a crises that requires an entitlement cut (Social Security) for "the good of the economy" while also expanding military spending at the same time.

Long term bond yields are not directly tied to the Fed funds rate.

The problem is the debt purchased by the Fed during QE had extremely low yields (COVID era) the reserves held by banks created by the Fed during QE now cost more to service by the Fed.

There is also insane amount of debt from ai related investment. China's free model is crushing the ai margins while these companies need to pay their debt and obligations. The debt bomb clock is ticking.

The next few years would be fun.

QE without public debt sterilization is going to appear as the costliest macroeconomic mistake of the early 21st century.

Disagree, fairly strongly. In 2008, four trillion dollars evaporated. In order to keep the economy from completely crashing, the Fed created $4T using QE and such tricks. The result was 15 years of flat. No inflation for 15 years. If inflation shows up a decade and a half later, that probably wasn't the fault of how QE was done.

You're getting my point wrong:

- I absolutely agree that inflation has nothing at all to do with QE, people who claimed that are just idiots who have a gold fetish.

- the problem I'm talking about is the fact that central banks didn't use QE as an opportunity to erase the public debt it bought. At the time it wouldn't have been an issue in any way. But now because inflation is back (due to oil) central banks cannot buy government bonds when they reach maturity and have to raise rates. Then the government bonds have become very expensive, and it has to be paid to the private sector on the market, so whenever a US govt security reaches maturity, the budget constraint increases. Sterilization of the debt would have alleviated this issue a lot at no cost.

Also, we should have taken the lessons of the era and raise the inflation target to 4%[1] at that time (it was definitely politically achievable then, now not so much).

[1]: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2016/12/31/the...

I see. Well, what you propose might have the minor problem of being illegal for the Fed to do. I'm not perfectly sure (and I don't want to take the time to research this rabbit hole right now), but the Fed is deliberately different from the Treasury. It's not supposed to fund the government by creating money.

At a minimum, doing so would have created doubts about the future of the dollar. (Because countries that start having the central bank create money to fund the government often wind up in runaway inflation, with the currency becoming worthless.)

As to a 4% target: Given that they were stuck at 0% for the next decade (and tried, and failed, to get up to 2%), why would they move the target to 4%? They already couldn't do what they said, why double their failure?

> see. Well, what you propose might have the minor problem of being illegal for the Fed to do. I'm not perfectly sure (and I don't want to take the time to research this rabbit hole right now), but the Fed is deliberately different from the Treasury. It's not supposed to fund the government by creating money.

That's a good point, but it's not as clear cut. The Fed is supposed to achieve the double goal of full employment and price stability and it's not forbidden to make money out of thin air for that purpose, that's the reason why QE is a thing at all. The exact legality of canceling US debt on its balance sheet isn't clear, but:

1. Before 2014 the Obama admin had the power to pass a law making that explicitly legal.

2. There are examples of theoretically valid instruments to achieve the same goal which have been discussed in the period (see the “1 trillion dollar coin”).

> At a minimum, doing so would have created doubts about the future of the dollar. (Because countries that start having the central bank create money to fund the government often wind up in runaway inflation, with the currency becoming worthless.)

Context matters: doing it now would send a disastrous signal, but back in the early 2010s the challenge was to drive inflation up, which is why the Fed used QE in the first place. If anything such a move could have made QE more efficient to achieve its goal (in addition to helping today's public finances, which I argue would have had a stabilizing effect over the long run).

> As to a 4% target: Given that they were stuck at 0% for the next decade (and tried, and failed, to get up to 2%), why would they move the target to 4%? They already couldn't do what they said, why double their failure?

The IMF paper I linked above is pretty clear about the goal of such a measure, but the idea is to have more leeway in case of crisis, because if your inflation is around 2%, your Fed target rate is around 2% as well and you can only lower it by 2% as a stimulus measure, whereas with a 4% baseline inflation rate you have twice the leverage in terms of target rate.

Re 4%: And, as we saw in 2008 and after, being stuck against 0% with no room to move is a really uncomfortable place to be.

Re the "1 trillion dollar coin": I like your wording: "Theoretically valid". I don't like YOLOing theoretically valid moves in a crisis, only to find out a month later that the courts rule them invalid and you have to unwind them.

> I don't like YOLOing theoretically valid moves […], only to find out a month later that the courts rule them invalid and you have to unwind them.

I agree, which is why I put “go through the legislative process to make that legal” above. Especially since there was no real emergency. (“in a crisis” though going YOLO may still be worth it though, because it may be enough to earn the time you need to go through the bottom of the crisis. And also if it's very unclear how legal/illegal this is, the fait accompli may be enough to convince the judges to side with your decision in order to put the country in too much of a trouble).

The country has been _run_ by fools for 26 years. Congress has had 26 years to do something about the fiscal situation, and we've had four presidents, and the fiscal responsible side of the electorate is never listened to.

Both sides are to blame - neither will fix the problem. Obama could've made that his goal - he was competent, had a lot of political good will, and many people were frustrated at the bailout policy Bush did, but instead it was inflationary printing (quantitative easing), Obamacare and Cash 4 Clunkers (which the used car market still hasn't recovered from).

I never voted for him - I didn't view him as honest, nor did he seem to indicate that he liked America, but was rather just a good talker - but I think he could've been a great president given a less radicalizing agenda.

He was probably the best situated president in terms of timing to fix the debt problem, but instead it was a good time for divisive politics. By the time Obama finished, it became clear neither party actually cared about the fiscally conservative Ron Paul supporting voting block.

I would love to hear what was "radical" or "divisive" about Obama's policy. A significant portion of the country disliking him because of his skin color doesn't make his policies "radical"

A universal health care mandate were both radical and divisive, and the popular nickname for the ACA today is "Obamacare".

I happen to think the policy was a good idea, and voting to keep it in play was the best vote of John McCain's career ... but it was definitely both radical and divisive.

Now, much of the "mandate" has been stripped away, health care remains a mess, and access is far from affordable, but you can't really blame that one on Obama.

> A universal health care mandate were both radical and divisive

It seems quite ironic, given the frequent complaints about the inability of Congress to either govern effectively or fix health insurance (for many and various definitions of "fix"), that the ACA was so divisive. At least it got passed! Yet given the opportunity twice (2017-2019, 2025-2027), a politically viable alternative hasn't been offered up by opponents of the ACA, let alone being able to fully repeal it.

Lol cool so health care is your definition of "radical" and "decisive". Hint: it's neither of these things and the only reason it was considered as such was because Obama was black (see tan suit). Seems like we need a few more years of woke cause you still can't see the obvious

It was not radical and he adopted originally republican ideas. They even originally backed it.

The thing is, the divisiveness comes from one side - conservatives who were and are determine to oppose literally everything.

Why specifically 26 years? I agree that Congress has been increasingly useless, leading to more and more rule by presidential decree in order to have a government that runs at all, but there wasn't a step function 26 years ago.

its because prior to that (2000 Bush era), congress and president had a plan to payoff debt and had a balanced budget plan in place to avoid over spending.

> Both sides are to blame

— the one side after they fsck the country sideways, every goddamn time.

> The country has been _run_ by fools for 26 years.

It's hard to accept the 'everyone is the same' in light of Trump's antics. Remind me again which presidents started wars of choice at the behest of Israel even when they were explicitly warned of the consequences?

For those of us without a degree in economics the last few years have seemed a bit unhinged from reality so I will not claim any deep insight here. However, it is hard to imagine that an increase in cost of debt will not have some impact and probably in ways not anticipated by many of those with economics degrees.

Higher rates means financing/borrowing is more expensive. Mortgage rates will go up, possibly pushing home prices down. This is neutral for buyers because of higher rates, but bad for sellers. Loans (personal or business) will be harder to come by. Layoffs, or at least hiring freezes, are more likely. Companies will move into a defensive rather than an growth mode. Higher unemployment will lead to more desperation, and possibly consumer defaults on loans and mortgages.

Government interest payments, which are already high, will become higher after future bond sales. This will compound future budgetary problems and could eventually lead to cuts in entitlements. If so, expect crime and political instability (already a problem) to rise in the future. This will take a while, though.

Normally rates are increased to lower inflation by reducing the supply of money. Given the multiple concurrent problems with energy (Hormuz, Red Sea/Yanbu, Russia/Ukraine, possibly Libya as problems are starting there, China is buying aggressively) then higher rates may not be enough to stop inflation. This would create a situation where both borrowing is harder and inflation continues to rage. This is very bad and will lead to demand destruction (nobody’s buying anything because it’s too expensive and they can’t finance it anyway). This results in a severe recession at the minimum.

Edit: wow, I really set off a discussion with this. See replies below for clarification on mortgage rates, which is the least important part anyways. Also, I should note that a lot of the above is a worst case scenario, if energy isn’t solved soon and especially if bonds don’t respond to the hike, leading to further hikes.

Home prices are sticky on the way down, 25 basis points won't change much

Supply is way up and sales are way down, on average: https://wolfstreet.com/2026/09/10/sales-of-existing-single-f...

This could be the catalyst to lower prices if sellers get spooked, especially if gas prices keep going up.

Your graph shows that home sales have been at a constant rate for the last 3 years. They are way down from 2020-2021, when covid plus low interest rates caused a home buying frenzy, but this is not new. We've been in this regime for the last 4ish years, 25 basis points is not going to change anything. In fact, interest rates are lower now than they were a year ago.

That's not to say that rising rates aren't a sign of bad things, the definitely are, it's just not going to make much of an impact with this magnitude of change.

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

Sales have remained low (at GFC levels) while inventory has continued to climb. In other words supply is up and demand is flat. Doesn’t look good to me, but I’m not a professional market analyst.

It all depends on how long buyers (in aggregate) are willing to hold out, or if they are simply unable to buy at these prices. And nobody really knows that.

Neutral for buyers? Absolutely not.

As a buyer you rather want to take out a loan in a high interest rate environment than a low interest rate environment, given that the monthly payment is the same.

1000 usd extra paid towards your mortgage actually makes a difference when the rate is 15% compared to when it is 1.5%

There's also "date the rate, marry the price". If you're a buyer and think that rates are going to come down within a couple of years, you can lock in the lower price of your home for property tax purposes and then refinance when rates are lower.

But a lot of people bought in 2024 expecting that to happen.

This really doesn’t make sense.

Higher interest rates mean the monthly payment is higher. You need to pay back the principal + the interest.

He assumed that the payment is the same meaning the principal for the same house went down and so this is neutral. If your payment is the same it doesn't matter what is principal vs interest. In the best cases rates go down in the future and then you refinance and your payment goes way down.

House prices tend to be "sticky", so that assumption is probably wrong. People who own a house often cannot afford to sell for the current value since it won't pay off their loan and leave enough money left over for a replacement house so they avoid moving. Eventually things get bad enough that they "sell short", but that takes a credit hit so you don't want to do that until the loss is large (and in turn you gain more).

Maybe the mortgage system is different in the US.

But if you have a 25 year term on a loan for a $500,000

Approx numbers:

5%: $2922 monthly, total paid: $876,885

10%: $4543 monthly, total paid: $1,353,000.

Yes, so the 500k is not fixed - that should be obvious from these calculations.

You didn't do the same math.

Given a $1500 monthly payment and a 30 year loan (30 year is most common in the US), at 5% loan is $279,400; at 10% the loan is for 170,900.

How is 10% less than 5% ?

Only if you expect rates to come down in the future. If the monthly payment is the same, I guess you have a slightly bigger mortgage interest deduction for tax purposes, but you’re still paying the same amount each month.

If you expect rates to come down soon, you can plan to refinance in the future, but that’s a gamble. Rates may not go down, or the value of the house could go down before you refinance, which may make refinancing more expensive depending on how much you owe.

No?

Paying down a high interest mortgage will always have bigger impact on the dollar than paying down a low interest mortgage.

If you’re paying the same amount monthly, your cash flow is the same. Are we not comparing apples to apples here? I mean a traditional fixed mortgage.

I’m comparing a mortgage with a high rate and lower principal to one with a lower rate and high principal, where the minimum monthly payments are the same and the owner pays the minimum.

A high interest mortgage just means that you pay more total interest over the life of the mortgage. In any case traditional mortgages are front-loaded, so you pay more towards interest up front than you do principal.

I said that the monthly payment is the same. Not that you pay the same amount towards your loan.

An optional extra payment is worth more when interest rates are higher.

Ie. An optional extra payment of 1000$ will pay your 150$ a year in saved interest when the rate is 15% and only 15$ when the rate is 1.5%.

Everything else being equal, optional payments has a higher value, which represent value to the buyer.

This is true, but I was not assuming extra payments and I don’t know where you got that assumption from. Many people can’t afford to make extra payments given the already high cost of housing and the rising cost of everything else.

My initial complaint was merely that the interest rate it not neutral to buyers.

I guess I was just referring to average buyers, who don’t often pay extra.

The question is what will rates do in the future. If rates go down you refinance, if they go up even more you hold your rates. Either way so you are fine long term, but it can be 10 years before it pays off.

Note that the US mostly does fixed rate for life of the loan. Many countries only have ARM (adjustable rates), and those exist in the US as well. If you have an ARM that changes things greatly.

Mortgage rates are not decided by the fed rate as much as they are by the bond yields. There’s a reason why the mortgage rates were above 7% yesterday even when the fed rate has been stable for a while.

This rate hike is aimed to stabilize the bond yields which in turn will lower the mortgage rates.

But bond yields are based on a market.

If interest rates go up, bonds get sold (for better yield bearing products), pushing the yields of those bonds higher. And it finds some equilibrium. The fact it isn't immediate has to do with short term vs long term bonds. When they mature and the pace of arbitrage.

I don't see how a rate hike is meant to lower mortgage rate. And just looking at the figures shows it's the opposite effect.

Logically, if borrowing money becomes more expensive, how could borrowing specifically for the purpose of buying houses become cheaper.

You have to look at the current context. Bond yields have been spiking, mostly because of the inflation expectations from oil prices and tariffs (mostly oil prices). Mortgages mostly track 10 year yields, which is why when fed dropped the rates back to back, the mortgage rates didn’t come down. The current hike (and the next one) is supposed to create a deflationary pressure, but also provide confidence to the market that the fed will step in to cool inflation if necessary. This in turn lowers the yield on 10 year treasuries and therefore mortgage rates.

The fed rate provides a floor for mortgage rates, but the 10 year yield and mortgage demand decide the ceiling. Currently the demand is pretty low, and therefore the yield mostly controls the mortgage rates.

what I'm saying is that Fed hikes interest rates → bonds sell off → yields rise → mortgage rates rise.

This is logical and empirically observed.

But you are right on the longer term effect. Zooming out: Fed hikes → inflation cools → inflation expectations fall → yields fall → mortgage rates fall.

But the latter is not guaranteed, and it takes time.

I'm unsure to understand how the ceiling and floor mechanisms work. But will dig into that. Thanks.

> Fed hikes interest rates → bonds sell off → yields rise

This part isn’t true. It can happen, but not always, especially right now.

So far you are right, yields are falling since yesterday.

It seems like this would depend on the bond market’s perception of whether or not this hike is the start of a trend. It could be seen as a signal that political attempts to lower rates have been unsuccessful.

“Higher rates means financing/borrowing is more expensive. Mortgage rates will go up,…”

This is highly inaccurate. The 10 year US treasury is a better metric for predicting mortgage rates. We saw this during the past interest rate cuts, interest for loans and mortgages still went up, remember? I do, because I was borrowing at the time. And why was that? Because the 10-year treasury continued going up, and that matters more than short term interest rates. The 10-year treasury is about expectations about the future, so we need to look at how the market responds before screaming mortgage rates will go up, they could actually go down.

Variable rate (loans) track the Fed rate. Fixed rate (loans) track the long term treasury yields.

I didn’t say it was the best metric, but they trend in the same direction over time.

The 10 year and fed rates are usually correlated. Occasionally rates spike or dip without moving the 10 year, but these events are brief. This could be a short spike, but only time will tell.

The comment could be more about the politics of this not the economics, Donald Trump has made it clear he is very against this sort of rate rise

What Trump says is never clear. It's also not a reliable source for what behavior the administration (or even he) exhibits.

Last time interest rates went up, Startups and SaaS went down, which many on HN 's livelihood depends.

Stagflation is when the economy stagnates yet inflation is higher than ideal. Inflation and economic activity are typically correlated, and the conventional wisdom back in the day was that you couldn't have unemployment going up and things costing more, because it was expected that demand going down puts a downward pressure on prices. When people aren't hiring and buying but things cost more and more, life just kind of sucks. The last time this happened was in the 1970s in the aftermath of a few oil embargoes that made oil prices go through the roof and a disastrously expensive failed war in Vietnam, there was gas rationing, it sucked.

You may notice a few key similarities now with oil embargoes, reduced hiring, an extremely expensive war, and rapidly expanding government debt as a result of that war. If you want a qualitative feeling about people's moods in the 70s, you can watch such movies as:

Taxi Driver The Deer Hunter The Warriors Americathon Network

I suggest A Boy And His Dog (based on a Harlan Ellison story)

why are you responding to a person like it is an LLM?

Not sure tbh.

It’s a highly non-linear system, many moving parts, people and systems adapt.

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future!

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