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arcticbull 2 days ago

They influence creation of money by adjusting the short-term interest rate which influences the demand for borrowing at commercial and retail banks. It's not that direct or straight-forward though, because they only have control over the short end of the yield curve not the long end. The long end of the yield curve has interest rates defined mostly by inflation expectations. If they dropped rates to 0% overnight it probably wouldn't move the 30Y yield all that much -- it might even raise it because of the expectation lower short-end yields would raise inflation.

The Fed doesn't have nearly as much control as folks think.

The Fed directly created money during QE and they are directly destroying it during QT. There's a net add, but that's mostly because the economy is growing, which creates new demand for money as expressed by demand for debt.

The money supply staying fixed or shrinking is a non-goal anyways. It's irrelevant. What matters is inflation as measured from the change in actual prices.

Printerisreal 2 days ago | parent [-]

they lie about real inflation, everywhere

arcticbull 2 days ago | parent [-]

They really don't. You can run the numbers yourself. All the prices that it's computed from are public, the methodology is public and it's dead easy to backtest. Dead. Easy. (1 + (Inflation / 100)) ^ (Years). Inflation would be the dumbest possible thing to lie about because it's so damn easy to check.

The conversation always goes like this.

You: "The government is lying about inflation!"

Me: "Ok, what rate do you think it's actually been?"

You: "10%!"

Me: "So you're telling me inflation over the last 30 years was 1700%? So prices are now 17X higher than in 1995? You sure?"

Then we look up historical prices like this.

https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/this-is-what-grocerie...

In 1995 ground beef was $1.49/lb.

Bread was $.89/loaf.

Eggs were $0.92/doz.

Milk was $2.50/gal.

idk if you're shopping at Erewhon but where I shop ground beef isn't $25/lb, bread isn't $15/loaf, eggs, well, you got me there lol, and milk isn't $42.50/gal.

Unless the conspiracy is far bigger than we think, or "they" are everywhere, whoever "they" are, I think it's safe to assume that inflation numbers have been pretty accurate.