236 karma · joined September 20, 2012
I'd also like to celebrate that we can have learning exchanges like this on HN! That's awesome. Thanks for all the great things you've brought to the conversation rojeee!
Plus, nothing like that with a dose of zero-indexed irony :) Looks like CS isn't alone in the zero-indexed world.
Big monetary swings like this do bolster the case for it as an inflation-resistant value store...like gold (or stocks), both of which have risen quite a bit this year.
If you want to see, can click the gear in the upper right on the site. Then format. Then check the log box. No URL scheme, unfortunately, or I'd link it for ya.
(1) Gives an incentive to deploy money. "Use it or lose it." This stimulates investment and consumption.
(2) Some prices are "sticky down," like wages; people respond much better to nominal wage increases than pay cuts. Inflation lets these prices be adjusted down more easily if needs be.
(3) Stealth tax, not only on the holders of dollar-denominated wealth but also because inflation (a) pushes people into higher tax brackets and (b) creates more taxable "capital gains". If you're a politician, it's nice to be able to pass repeated tax cuts, even as government expenditures continue to grow as a fraction of GDP.
All that said, relatively stable price levels are important. Without them, contracts get tricky, particularly around inventory or agreements into the future.
The question is, politically, can they be so responsible in contracting the money supply thereafter? Hopefully!
Edit: Indeed. M1's definition: "M1 includes funds that are readily accessible for spending. M1 consists of: (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) traveler's checks of nonbank issuers; (3) demand deposits; and (4) other checkable deposits (OCDs), which consist primarily of negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts at depository institutions and credit union share draft accounts. Seasonally adjusted M1 is calculated by summing currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits, and OCDs, each seasonally adjusted separately.
I agree with this line of argument for the 2008 era quantitative easing! But my read is that M1 explicitly excludes bank reserves, so the M1 created can't be locked-up reserves, right?
Definitely a good factor to know about, but there's also been a huge surge in things like Monetary Base (currency in circulation+reserves) [0]. Looks to me like there's a lot of (effectively) money printing behind this, not just an artifact of M1's definition?
I'm posting this because I was shocked when I saw this graph. I hadn't previously appreciated just how much of an unprecedented explosion in the money supply there'd been this year.
In particular, it seems to quantify a lot of potential for long run inflation and a very expansionary monetary policy move required to prop up the economy during the pandemic. But I'm not an expert here; I'm hoping we can put our heads together. I'd be very curious to hear general discussion and insights into the dynamics. Let's go, community of systems thinkers :)
While the M1 measure of money shows the change most dramatically, other ways of looking at the same data (dollars printed, M2, MZM, etc.) seem to tell the same story. There have also been some news articles written, but I thought that for HN, we'd go directly to the numbers.
Thanks for taking a look!
It did indeed require a lot of additional tweaks and benchmarking. Honestly don't think any part of our original algorithm or the tricks in the paper made it into the final version. Just doing a Fourier type thing works rarely (~20%), but the principle does work; you can get it working ~90% of the time. That said, I'd be surprised irregular heartbeat were doable in a short recording period. But I'd love to be surprised!
[0] Hands Free Heart Rate Monitor (free, private) https://apps.apple.com/app/id1457939511
But there are definitely edge cases that are hard to control for--a faint, pulsing red light would probably be the worst one.
My experience using buckaroo in a large project over the past year has been extremely positive, and I'd say addresses most of the problems raised here. It's far and away better than anything else I've used.
I find that the second limiting factor I hit is being able to easily interop with other languages and to cross-compile for other platforms. Buck makes that super easy, too.