• timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    Yeah but what you and the op ascribe to the Fed isn’t accurate. They’re in charge of monetary policy, not financial policy.

    A lot of the issues with American society are due to financial policy which is the responsibility of Congress and the executive branch.

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Monetary policy, interest rates, asset inflation, and stagflation all are directly linked. The Fed isn’t alone in causing this disconnect, which I acknowledged by noting previous administration policy, but the interest rates and quantitative easing have always been very related to asset inflation and wealth inequality and have been a direct target of the Fed. There’s a reason why Trump wants them to reduce interest rates further so badly despite the fact that since Volker even the Fed itself says that worsens stagflation. I directly dispute the models that say this stuff is benign or helpful because if anything rising income inequality is one of the biggest predictors for extreme economic depressions. And frankly it’s not just the Fed that’s doing this shit. It’s the whole Western liberal economic system.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Yeah I mean quantitative easing isn’t fully causal of inequality, but it definitely helps. Anyone whose primary income comes from holding appreciating assets sees that income rise, and anyone whose primary income comes from working sees nothing guaranteed happen.

        They have a pet theory that pushing a lot of money into the top end of the economy via spreadsheet doesn’t necessarily immediately cause inflation because the “velocity of money” (i.e., how often people spend it) is lower at the top of the economy. So they justify basically pumping the rich full of cheap to free money based upon the idea that the rich won’t spend that money.

        It “worked” for a time in that inflation wasn’t high enough to them to warrant alarm, but in a pandemic even the rich will spend a lot of money to bid up rare things when supply is low for them.

        There are definitely other factors, but low – practically negative – interest rates for decades are part of what got us into this mess.

        • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Well the people who’s primary income that comes from their labor sees their wages stay the same while the rising assets take more of their income in the form of rents or the cost to actually buy things like property. That is until they can’t afford to buy necessities at all and completely abandon that economy. Those pressures exist both on individuals and new productive enterprises.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            Yep that’s the other part of the dynamic. Everyone assumes that wage earners will at least get an inflationary bump, but companies, the Fed, and the government have all abandoned workers.

            Even during times of “low inflation” prices continue to rise for things like housing. Over time that “low inflation” adds up for people with no assets working low wage jobs. Then when there’s high inflation (like mid to late COVID, where the dumb dumbs encouraged anyone who could afford it to buy housing via historically low interest rates at the same time folks were trapped in their current living quarters, the supply of housing was in the toilet, and the price of housing was already at all time highs) people get permanently priced out of fucking shelter.