This was a mind shift for me, inflation applies to stock prices too. The US cannot cut spending enough to prevent the debt death spiral. Inflation and growth are the only options. Everyone wants growth but it's hard to get, nobody wants inflation, but it's easy to get. Inflation is here to stay.

It is natural that stocks go up, since the value of the dollar is going down and there is no clear recession. Not only stocks, but precious metals are also making new highs because USD is losing its purchasing power.

If it makes you feel any better or worse, I was 100% sure of this in 2019. 100%. COVID I thought for sure was going to be the death blow.

Conservative governments in the US have increased spending going back 50 years. Their base still believes them for some reason that they will lower spending.

Austerity is probably not the answer. We need to redefine the economy and quick.

> I'd get D >= X >= C+, where X is my grade

Mostly as a curiosity, what you've written here is impossible, lol. I think you mean your grade would range from a D to a C+, inclusive. But you have written that your grade would be greater-or-equal to a C+, yet less-than-or-equal to a D, which would be.... impressive :D

edit: Closed intervals are great for communicating this kind of thing in general. You could say your grade is in the interval [D, C+], where the brackets indicate that D and C+ are included in the options. Compare to the open interval, which would indicate that D and C+ are excluded -- ie (D,C+) includes only the entries D+, C-, C.

I read the article differently, but it still comes out as a series of non-sequiturs.

> Concern about the Fed being unable to meet structural issues

Sounds like a problem IFF there are extensive structural issues.

> Concern regarding weak labor demand in healthcare

> Concern regarding weak labor supply due to new immigration policies

Shouldn't these two problems tend to balance out?

Also:

> Falls in labour supply can impact inflation, economic growth, and public finances. They can add to inflationary pressures—as employers compete for scarce employees by raising wages, adding to the cost of producing goods and services.

It should balance out, shouldn't it, because demand for the resources will decrease as the supply of laborers decreases as well?

I don't think you really know whether the tariffs are going to work or not. It's not hare-brained, as you say because it has two purposes: 1) To attempt to bring manufacturing back home and 2) To raise capital in order to pay down the debt.

If you look at the debt clock, 2 is working. As for 1, it's a long-term project and you're being too impatient. Also, you are subject to the mass media hand-wringing propaganda that states that everything Trump does is automatically terrible because Trump. It's childish and nonsensical to think that way, however. We need people who think outside of the box and it's not like Trump came up with "tariffs" by himself without the input of smart economist thinkers.

The point is, you lack the big picture.

On point #1, if the US ends up in a shooting war with China (because China is expansionist) it would be very bad for us if we are unable to manufacture critical supplies, particularly semiconductors, whose manufacture is concentrated in Taiwan, a brittle and untenable situation for the entire western world.

Be a crybaby and downvote me now, or listen and learn, your choice. I agree with the rest of what you said, btw--the whole article is just bs.

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

(I agree about the annoyance, as most HN readers probably do, but the trouble with these complaints is they routinely get upvoted to the top of threads, where they choke out more interesting discussion.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

polite of them to put that front and center so i can save myself some time

yeah its a shame really, I've tried to explain this to our CEO when he wants to use AI slop headers for our blog entries. Just spend 5 cents on a stock photo if you need to.

> can combat inflation by speeding up the run off of their egregiously large balance sheet and keep El Jefe happy by lowering interest rates

The Fed lowers rates by buying assets, i.e. taking bonds out of the market and putting cash into them. Lowering rates means paring or reversing the last three years' balance sheet reductions [1].

Running down the balance sheet faster would require raising rates. You can't lower rates and reduce the balance sheet unless you're doing off balance sheet fuckery.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

> They can combat inflation by speeding up the run off of their egregiously large balance sheet and keep El Jefe happy by lowering interest rates.

You want to combat inflation by lowering interest rates?

Also you want to "run off" the balance sheet (quantitative tightening) and lower rates at the same time? I.e., do two contradicting at the same time?

Fed has to buy treasuries or risk the price bottoming out on them. It has the affect as QE which is inflationary. US can't keep running a trillion+ deficit, thats the cause of inflation.

Just FYI, selling bonds (not notes) back into the market would likely raise rates. Longer duration yields are set by the market (supply and command)

The Fed only sets the federal funds rate, they have less control over the rates further along the curve.l and can only influence them by buying or selling assets.