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1. Yes, absolutely. It would be due to a change in supply. Price controls, taxes, regulation, etc affect the price only insomuch as they affect supply and demand. It's a matter of definition: it's just as true in a market economy as it is in a non-market economy, or under market failure. Whether it's a useful framework is a different matter!
2a. So, interest rates are indeed determined by the market, with respect to open market operations right? The Fed buys and sells with a target in mind, but they certainly can, as you point out, fail to hit their target.
2b. This was a bit of unfortunate jargon: demand for "money" specifically means cash/cash equivalents relative to other assets like stocks/gold/real estate. It's not referring to wealth, although I do think the desire there isn't infinite: biological limits/post scarcity.
2c. And "demand" for money refers to the whole of the demand curve (and shifts in the whole of the curve). That is, how much of your portfolio do you want to hold in cash/equivalents at a given interest rate?
2d. Fed open market operations do target the whole of the economy: it's a ham fisted approach. Inflation affects groceries and gas, just as much as bank liquidity and such.
3. So, relative price change isn't inflation by definition, and market expectations of the interest rate path are priced in. Of course, there are plenty of relative price changes alongside inflation, but there's a lot more to the economy beyond open market operations. The Fed isn't able to specifically target say apples over oranges, hence ham fisted.
4. Sure, broad aggregates like NGDP don't include inequality or climate change, but that's a good thing because the Fed's job is limited to keeping aggregate demand (NGDP) on track. Of course there's a lot more to the economy, but that's beyond the realm of Fed open market operations. That is, I don't think the Fed is the right place to look for solutions.
5a. So money neutrality only says: a permanent 1 time increase to the money supply doesn't affect real GDP.
5b. Again, more jargon: "long run" is however long it takes for thing(s) to adjust (whatever it is: wages, rates, output, etc), and "short run" is just short of that. So as a unit of time, it depends on the good as well as real world conditions. The short run can go forever, market failure maybe. The short run can be zero, when things go according to market expectations and everything's already been priced in.
Sorry, a lot of that's non sequitur. But that's my point: I think the mainstream is a coherent and useful story, but it's not relevant in this context, hence total nonsense. To the extent that there's an upward trend in inefficient businesses or 'rich get richer, poor get poorer', I don't see how open market operations can be the culprit.
But yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with your overall impression of the Fed hahaha.
* https://www.themoneyillusion.com/the-league-of-monetary-cran...
* https://www.themoneyillusion.com/mishkins-revealing-omission...
His blog is great. Mainstream, orthodox macroeconomics. Well written, useful, and entertaining. Read the whole thing, in chronological order:
* https://www.themoneyillusion.com/page/932/
I graduated with a B average in economics, so I can't address this head on, but here's my understanding of the mainstream perspective:
1. Never reason from a price change: Prices go up, therefore people buy less? To the contrary, this begs the question of, why did prices go up? The causation is backwards: demand goes up, and then prices respond.
2. For example: "Low interest rates are generally a sign that money has been tight, as in Japan; high interest rates, that money has been easy." -Milton Friedman. The demand for money goes up (for whatever reason), the fed responds by increasing the supply of money, then interest rates fall.
3. Interest rates and inflation are nominal, thus don't impact relative prices (ie price discovery). Deflation/hyperinflation do have real effects though.
4. High/low, easy/tight is relative to market expectations. Successfully targeting the interest rate (or NGDP/aggregate demand) isn't market "stimulation" but keeping things on track, in a do no harm manner. And deviating does harm (ie business cycles).
5. Mainstream macro says money is neutral in the long run, non neutral in the short run. This might be what you're looking for: the effect of short term non neutrality of money on relative prices across the overall economy.
So, if the downward pressure on DCF denominators is an economy wide phenomenon (ie inflation), then it's still the same say top 10% of businesses that survive. The missing link for me is: what's pushing up the value of inefficient businesses more than efficient businesses (or apples)? What distorts prices specifically and systematically in favor of inefficient businesses, vs. against or randomly/unpredictably?
Now, let me go off the rails a bit re: wealth inequality. I think it's mostly just technology. There's just more and more stuff every year, and that sort of accretion, mix and stir with meritocracy, kleptocracy, plain old statistical randomness, network effects, what-have-you, lead to not just more wealth inequality, but inequality in general, and really just more overall diversity.
The space of possibilities is just expanding at an incredible rate, together with the population, so there's a lot more room. And, I think it's natural for the distribution of people to be diffuse across the space. And, more people across a wider space, it's harder to consolidate, especially upward (eg Mao moved us in the wrong direction). Markets + technology do bring up the floor (hunger, shelter, etc), but we're still a ways off from the floor or the ceiling hitting our biological limits, ie post scarcity a la Iain M Banks' The Culture.