Inflation/stagflation Thread

The key difference, as you can see in the article, is that the USD is being used as a reference currency pretty much all over the world. This would have to change (or at least start changing) before we have to worry about such an end.

I suspect the people who actually have money keep lots of them in dollars and euros.

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Things will continue until they don’t. Here is a perspective on the US national debt compared to our GDP. The build up in debt over the last two years looks dangerous to me.

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Oh come on, dude, dudette, or choicedujourit. Can’t you see that we almost hit this level in the mid-forties?

Before you explain that we were funding a war in the forties, may I remind you that we’ve been funding a War on Poverty for almost 70 years? You can’t expect not to run up the debt during a war.

ETA: if your government is communist, socialist, fascist, a dictatorship, or a monarchy, you can run a war without running up debt.

Hopefully, most people aren’t dumb enough to do that. History is filled with people holding cash and being wiped out going back to the Roman Empire. There are thousands of failed currencies and a huge incentive to keep printing. Even the US dollar which is considered to be a stable currency has lost 98% of its value in the last 100 years.

IMO if you put your savings into an imaginary fiat piece of paper made up by the governments and backed by nothing that can be printed at will you kind of have it coming for you.

Cuba - can’t be the communist economy, gotta blame someone else.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/cuba-sees-2021-inflation-of-70-amid-reforms-and-import-hikes

Gil said the country had been planning for inflation of 60%

So, you knew it was coming, and are prepared. Way to go, commies.

he said taming inflation is one of the “main challenges” of 2022.

No #$%$%, Sherlock. It’s obvious why you’re a senior govt official.

In October, a government official said the economic reforms had led to price increases of as much as 6,900% in the informal market. On Tuesday, Gil called that interpretation “erroneous” saying it was used as an example of how the Cuban peso might have devalued if the state-controlled economy had been “linked” to the non-state economy.

Wow, with a willing mainstream media, it sounds like you’re ready for D̶e̶m̶o̶c̶r̶a̶t̶ democracy.

Gil also blamed inflation on U.S. economic sanctions, which he said had resulted in having thousands of containers of undelivered merchandise stuck in international ports.

There you go again… It’s K̶e̶n̶n̶e̶d̶y̶’̶s̶,̶ ̶N̶i̶x̶o̶n̶’̶s̶,̶ ̶R̶e̶a̶g̶a̶n̶’̶s̶,̶ ̶B̶u̶s̶h̶’̶s̶,̶ Trump’s fault. I guess it had nothing to do with commies staying home and not visiting your beaches.

Apologies to Bloomberg for b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶a̶l̶l̶ so many quotes.

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A lot of their debt is also denominated in dollars and euros so they don’t gain anything from the devaluing of the lira.

The declining lira is particularly difficult domestically because more than half of all household mortgages are owed in US dollars. Therefore with the 50% decline in the lira household mortgage payments doubled – this alone is putting quite a strain on household budgets!

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That’s insane. When I was reading about the debt problem I thought it was just corporate debt.

I suppose the only reasons to get a mortgage in a foreign currency is if either your regular income is tied to that currency, or because you can’t get it any other way and are woefully optimistic.

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Bestowing her ancient Indian wisdom on us

Inflation is just a company being really mean : Senator Elizabeth Warren has been trying to convince her constituents that prices are rising because of some sort of corporate conspiracy. Rising prices are not “simply some inevitable economic force of nature— it’s greed. And, in some cases, it is flatly illegal,” Warren said. The soaring price of cars? That’s a chip shortage caused by lack of corporate competition, she said. The cost of milk and eggs rising? Grocery stores are putting “corporate profits over consumers and workers.” She wrote a letter to Kroger, Albertson’s and Publixdemanding more information on these prices. For American consumers: Inflation surged 6.8% in November, the highest rate since 1982. Warren’s response is that businesses just need to be nicer and stop raising prices!

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more from Elizabeth Warren. She and the Democrats should just say that they want the government to take over the US economy.

Billions in funding could be on the way to chip makers

That’s why Warren is calling on the Commerce Department to use its power in doling out tens of billions of dollars in funding from legislation currently being debated by Congress, and to push back against industry consolidation.

To address the chip shortage and bolster domestic supply chains, Congress last year passed the CHIPS Act, which encourages domestic semiconductor production and research. Just 12% of the world’s computer chips were made in the United States in 2020, down from 37% in 1990.

The Senate has passed legislation that would fund the CHIPS for America Act. Raimondo, the Commerce secretary, has implored the House to do the same.

If that funding gets through Congress, it would open the door to a vast amount of grant funding from the federal government aimed at revitalizing the US semiconductor industry, including $19 billion in fiscal year 2022 alone.

Under the CHIPS Act, the Commerce Department would be in charge of distributing the funds to projects that the Commerce secretary deems are “in the interest of the United States.”

“It is clearly in the national interest of the United States to use this funding to push back against industry consolidation,” Warren wrote to Raimondo. “I encourage you to seize this opportunity through proper utilization and appropriation of these funds, ensuring that American consumers and workers see the full benefits of domestic investment.”

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Isn’t this pretty much what Trump was wanting to do, too?

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Huh? Providing funds is not the same (not even in the vicinity) of government takeover. All governments do this, from federal to local level, attracting business as a long-term investment. Getting semiconductors back on US soil is a great idea, if for nothing else then at least from a national security standpoint.

if Pocahontas, Bernie, the squad and most of the Democrats can have their way, they will gladly turn the United States into a socialist country.

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First I’d wonder why a product with such demand would need so much subsidizing.

Second, my bigger concern is where this money will go. Dollars to donuts they’ll give preference to the minority from the inner city ('cause experienced white guys can easily get their own funding if they want it) - and the business results will be what you expect when leaving things up to someone unqualified for what they’re trying to do. If that, since…

And third, this sounds like the Obama era solar incentives, where lots of money was given to select companies that soon failed after pocketing the cash. Such failures will be blown off as the risk of business, but I’ll bet anything some of that money goes to businesses that have no intention of succeeding.

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But those same businesses make significant contributions to the DNC.

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hmmm. Can we visit/ buy Turkish stuff cheaper now?? Turkish Air is actually a good airline…

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It is not a govt takeover, but it is govt control, which isn’t that far away. Instead of a slush fund which the politicians can direct to whoever has the softest hands, why not reduce/eliminate income taxes for chips manufactured here? To make the Libs h̶a̶p̶p̶y̶ less unhappy, throw a minimal tax on exported chips.

ETA: Oops. I responded before reading other responses to your post.

Because it can be manufactured cheaper elsewhere, obviously.

(this is from Bloomberg)

Fed accelerating anti-inflation push in wake of events

Federal Reserve officials are preparing to move quicker than the last time they tightened monetary policy in a bid to keep the U.S. economy from overheating amid high inflation and near-full employment.

Prospects for another year of growth above the economy’s speed limit with inflation already strong – along with a larger balance sheet that’s suppressing longer-term borrowing costs – “could warrant a potentially faster pace of policy rate normalization,” minutes from the Dec. 14-15 Federal Open Market Committee meeting said Wednesday.

Financial markets interpreted the comments as unequivocally hawkish. Traders raised bets on an interest-rate hike as soon as March to around an 80% probability, while the S&P 500 stock index slumped 1.9% at the close, the biggest drop in more than a month.

Read the entire Bloomberg piece here:

Fed Leaves Gradualism Behind With Urgency on Rates, Assets

Note:

This article is behind the Bloomberg paywall. The latter is easily defeated, if necessary, by clearing your Bloomberg cookies prior to accessing the above link.

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