High interest rates caused mass layoffs and curbed investment into new projects. All of this is the downstream effect of the Fed trying to strangle wage growth because people weren’t suffering enough. Now nobody has any money to buy things and companies who gleefully raised prices while wages stagnated are reaping what they have sown.
This is straight up Milton Friedman thought. He is the architect of our ruin:
As Friedman emphasized, “Inflation is an old, old disease.
We’ve had thousands of years of experience of it. There is
nothing simpler than stopping an inflation—from the
technical point of view.”
That remedy took a specific form: “The only cure for
inflation is to reduce the rate at which total spending is
growing.” This cure involved a temporary side effect, as
Friedman noted: “There is no way of slowing down inflation
that will not involve a transitory increase in unemployment,
and a transitory reduction in the rate of growth of output.
But these costs will be far less than the costs that will be
incurred by permitting the disease of inflation to rage
unchecked.”
Historically (since Sumer and Babylon) debt has been reset periodically because compound interest eventually breaks the economy. New kings would reset the debt because most of them were to the palace and it kept their army intact by not having small holders constantly getting dispossessed.
Our modern priests have convinced themselves that actually that’s bullshit and profits can go on forever exponentially, while the production curve is logistic.
High interest rates caused mass layoffs and curbed investment into new projects. All of this is the downstream effect of the Fed trying to strangle wage growth because people weren’t suffering enough. Now nobody has any money to buy things and companies who gleefully raised prices while wages stagnated are reaping what they have sown.
This is straight up Milton Friedman thought. He is the architect of our ruin:
Milton Friedman on Inflation - Edward Nelson
When you are arguing with neolibs on economy, you are arguing with Milton Friedman.
Historically (since Sumer and Babylon) debt has been reset periodically because compound interest eventually breaks the economy. New kings would reset the debt because most of them were to the palace and it kept their army intact by not having small holders constantly getting dispossessed.
Our modern priests have convinced themselves that actually that’s bullshit and profits can go on forever exponentially, while the production curve is logistic.