Yikes. The Fed has still learned nothing about inflation

Last June, during the European Central Bank forum, the host asked the chairman of the Federal Reserve about inflation. The Fed Chairman responded, “I think we now understand better how little we understand about inflation.” “Uh, that’s not very reassuring,” the host chuckled. Talk about an understatement. It’s downright terrifying. This is the Fed Chairman— the High Priest of finance— who has the power to control virtually everything in the economy. He can conjure trillions of dollars out of thin air practically at will, raise and lower interest rates, push businesses and banks into bankruptcy, and cause people to lose their jobs. And here he is acknowledging that they didn’t have a clue about inflation. Thank goodness that was 8 months ago! Certainly by now they've really learned everything they need to know. Wrong. They still don’t have a clue. This week Fed officials have been busy giving speeches in advance of their interest rate policy meeting later this month. And they keep complaining that the unemployment rate is too low. Too many people have jobs!! The Fed is trying to put more people out of work... under the assumption that if more people are unemployed, there will be less spending in the economy, and therefore inflation will fall. But this is such idiotic thinking. They may very well be successful in pushing millions of people into the unemployment line. But everybody knows that as soon as this happens, the government will step in and bail those people out with generous unemployment benefits. Think about it— the government did this in the 2008 recession, doling out luxurious unemployment benefits that lasted for YEARS. And during COVID they paid people to NOT work and stay home. So it’s practically a given that the government will dish out fresh new benefits to newly unemployed workers. And where will the government get all that money from to pay unemployment benefits? From the FED! Duh. How do these Fed officials not understand this?!?!? Another thing the Fed has totally missed is the ‘quality’ of the employment numbers. They fret that there’s too much job growth in the US— because they’re just looking at the QUANTITY. But if you take even a casual look beyond the headline numbers, you’ll see that most of the job growth is for waiters and bartenders. The US labor market doesn’t have red hot job growth for software engineers, biomedical researchers, or senior investment analysts. America is essentially becoming a bartender economy now. This is going on in front of their very eyes, but the Fed can’t see it. If you look at the official minutes and records from the Fed’s policy meetings, you can see what they actually discuss... and it becomes even more obvious they still don't understand inflation. They STILL blame inflation on Putin and the evil virus. There is ZERO discussion about how the government destroyed the economy and labor market with lockdowns, or how oil companies are being chased out of town (leading to higher energy prices), or all the idiotic new rules penned by the woke capitalism mob. And of course there’s zero discussion about the Fed’s own role in slashing interest rates to zero (and keeping them there for the better part of a decade), or printing more than $8 trillion since the 2008 recession. There’s no discussion of the $31+ trillion government debt, or last year’s $4 trillion deficit, or the impact of idiotic legislation like the poorly named “Inflation Reduction Act”. Ultimately they consistently prove that the people in charge of managing the US dollar have still learned absolutely nothing. When you think about it, that goes for nearly every major institution. The White House appears to have learned nothing, the media has learned nothing, the high priests of climate change have learned nothing. The good news though, is that everyone else— who feel the impact of these destructive policies— is learn...