Day late, dollar short. It's also an attempt at a cure rather than a preventative measure. Reduce inflation by reducing spending and increasing production.

mtgs work differently in canada. they have refinance for terms only, not for full amortization. but yes, could have broken the term to get a lower rate.

Glad I own all my stuff.

this post seems to argue itself. they predicted inflation would come down, then a war that no one predicted happened, and it didn't.

as to Biden misjudgment what can he do personally to combat inflation, honest question.

the only issue i have with the fed was they moved too slow, as they always do. we needed a few more % over a shorter time but they slow rolled it.

Well, if you chose a long-enough time window, inflation will always come down or go up. For example, if I'm predicting that inflation will come down within the next 5 years, there's almost no value in that. The timeframe is crucial.

Last summer, they predicted that the ongoing surge of inflation would be very short-lived and only last a handful of months. Instead it kept creeping up and up for another 6-7 months, with no signs of coming down anytime soon in early 2022. Even if there had been no war, and if January 2022 had been the peak (of which there were no signs at the time!!), it would still have taken another 6 months at least before inflation comes down to palatable levels again.




We've been over what Biden can do to combat inflation so many times. First, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Throwing another $1.9 trillion onto an economy which was already flush with cash but strapped for spending opportunities was a recipe for inflation. And it was unnecessary; by March 2021, we were already getting a handle on the pandemic, the vaccination campaign was in full swing, summer was right around the corner etc. Second, the current inflation is fueled by global supply chain issues. Biden could have pushed for lifting the Jones Act to alleviate it.

Third, since the start of the war in Ukraine, an oil and (natural) gas price shock is fueling global inflation on top of everything else. Under a more fossil-friendly administration, the American fracking industry could have ramped up its production to counteract OPEC, like they did in 2014ff.[1] It wouldn't have happened immediately, particularly considering the deep hole the industry fell into during covid, but there would at least be light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, Biden and his surrogates essentially tell us that sky-high gas prices are here to stay and we better get used to it. (And if we behave well and keep voting for "democracy", we'll get some goodies from the strategic oil reserve every 2 years when campaign season comes around.)

Fourth, it was a mistake to react to Russia's invasion of Ukraine with an all-out economic war, and with energy sanctions in particular. This approach by the West (muted military response, aggressive economic sanctions) happened under the leadership of Biden, so he bears a fair share of the blame for its fallout.




[1] Considering current oil prices and global excess demand, we would expect the industry to invest a lot more than they currently are, which is quite clearly tied to the policies and openly hostile stance of the Biden admin.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 15 2022 08:46am

Have to wait 2023 first quarter. Happy new year.

if people heard that inflation was transitory and took it to mean "well 1 month and we'll be deflated by 50%" they're idiots. if jan 2022 was to be the peak, w/o a russian war and the global supply chain issues it caused, and it did in fact take 6 months to get to a palatable level i dont see how that's far out of line with it being categorized as "transitory". inflation movement is a macro trend, they're 5-10% price increases month over month that take time to go up or down. 6 months of sideways or slight negative inflation stops the bleeding, and that's what a healthy economy leaving an inflationary period does. you dont magically see pricing revert to pre-inflation levels for many things, u just are happy to see them not going up again.

as to anti-russian gas economic war i dont think it's feasible for the USA to full out fund Ukraine with war materials AND also buy gas from Russia. that seems like a seriously icky thing to do. gas spiked, we all saw it, and it's settling big time. i used to see 4$/gal at the pumps for a sustained period, we now see 2.50$/gal. any minor adjustments wouldnt have seriously changed short term gas prices, short term being 6 months to a year. fracked oil supply wont magically wipe off 1$ from the pump price overnight, and gas is back down for now. same goes for any action on supply chain, they'd have been minor adjustments that still wont change that shipping prices spiked due to fuel costs.

this just rings to me as one of the cases where the right (and the left did it with trump for years) seizes on a phrase of quote of Biden to beat it to death and imply it was some nefarious and false outright lie. the fed has now acted to correct this, and Biden's admin wont prop up domestic oil due to their climate policy. it was rocky and we rode out the wave, without having to greenlight overpriced shitty fracking industries that are an ecological liability.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Dec 15 2022 10:03am

That's a big if.


Does this chart look to you like there were signs of inflation slowing around the 7.5% mark in January 2022?
Fact of the matter is that the FED signalled that it would tackle inflation by raising interest rates starting in March 2022, and then by taking bigger, more aggressive steps starting in May - and that inflation rates immediately responded. Had the FED raised the interest rates even just moderately during the fall of 2021, we could have spared us quite some inflation.



And many poorer people lost some 10-20% of their purchasing power in the process. Yay, so much winning!

i mean my whole point in posting this thread is that the fed FINALLY raised rates aggressively. since the inflation first kicked off and the housing market went bonkers ive been saying over and over they need to go 1980s reagan style and kick it up big.

but this has been an odd case, i dont know of another that's very analogous. the pandemic caused massive revenue loss to the american consumer, and it disrupted the supply chain like not much before it has. was the right answer just to not put any cash into the system as relief? even if the purchasing power of that cash declines as you do? if we didnt provide relief and loans to corporation they'd have passed the cost on the the consumer in pricing anyways.

i personally dont know, its hard to postulate what would have kept americans in a good pricing range AND with money to actually spend. all i know is that now the feds actions are good and they need to keep the rate up for a considerable period. regardless of what it crashes.

Of course some kind of covid relief was necessary. My gripe isn't with the covid relief packages from 2020, it is with the one from the spring of 2021 which wasn't needed anymore and only wasted taxpayer money while fueling inflation even further. Many experts were warning back then, as Biden pushed the package forward, that this was gonna happen. Note that US inflation stood 2.5% higher than in Europe in January 2022. There are other factors going into such a comparison (e.g. the US economy was more overheated than Europe's before the onset of covid), but that's a strong indication that the US overspent on covid relief.

Also note that Biden and the vast majority of Democrats were willing to spend several trillions more on various programs if Manchin and Sinema hadn't put a stop to it.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 15 2022 11:22am