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Comment by smackeyacky | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand why central banks seem to use such a blunt object like interest rates for every inflation problem. It would make sense to rise if the cause of inflation was accelerated economic activity, not price rises due to supply restrictions. How does hurting mortgage holders even more help with not starting wars? All it can do is have a double dampening effect on the economy as people pull back their discretionary spending.

Using interest rates for this kind of inflation is guaranteed to cause a recession.

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Central banks didn't use to do this, in the post-war period up until about 1980, they tried targeting the monetary aggregates like M2.

Unfortunately they discovered that the size of monetary aggregates was outside the control of central banks, these were demand determined by the public's desire for money balances. So all attempts to control the growth of monetary aggregates failed.

Having an inability to control anything else, the central banks turned to the one thing they could control -- overnight interest interest rates, and from that, bond yields more generally. That is the one tool in their toolbox.

Do you think other tools exist?

I don’t think we have a wide enough Overton window when it comes to economic discussions, the neoliberal revolution of the 1970s killed a lot of little levers of economic control in most post social democratic countries. Instead we were promised a new age of free trade and economic liberalism and one single, shiny lever to control the speed of the economy like the governor on a steam train.

Yet here we are 50 years later suffering booms and busts just like before. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge the failure of 50 years of industrialisation destruction that in hindsight was the inevitable outcome of open trade and the retreat of governments.

To answer the question, yes I think there are other options and trade barriers need to be part of that conversation.

It’s not entirely true. There’s plenty more levers on economy and inflation. This is the main one that central banks have.

For the elephant in the room, the current inflation woes are caused by oil price increase, which is a direct outcome of deliberate US policy.

Bob is correct here. The other tool people keep forgetting about is fiscal policy; government deficit spending is inflationary, and the US is currently running a very large deficit and was floating even more inflationary ideas like directly bribing voters to vote Republican in the midterms.

Really the problem is that everyone wants to make lots of money (economic growth) so they can spend more (increase consumption) but without anyone else raising their prices as a result. Unsquareable circle.

He's right about interest rates. But he's missing the point behind the debate: whose policy choices got us to where we are today where this is necessary? Republicans.

Not just Trump, Republicans as a whole. They are not fiscally conservative at all, and their culture wars and religious crusades are going to bankrupt the nation.

They'll sell you up a rope to corporate donors asking for deregulation. And we've seen exactly what happens when there is money to be made at the expense of other people's lives: spoiler alert, people like money more than they care about other people's health.

> hurting mortgage holders

How does raising rates hurt mortgage holders? They locked in their interest rate when they got the mortgage?

Not all mortgages are fixed rate.

95% of mortgages are fixed rate in the US. And even that number is too low, most of the ARMs are taken out by businesses, not households.

It's not good for the economy when no one is willing to move for the next 20-30 years. And it's not good for the people who are unable to move to chase a better job as well.

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