The last time this happened, voters didn’t credit Bill Clinton. That may be a bad omen, or a good one.
If the stock market chose presidents, Joe Biden would be a shoo-in for reelection in 2024. The market rallied this month amid growing optimism about the economy, with the S&P 500 zooming 1.9 percent Tuesday on news that the consumer price index rose only 3.2 percent in October (compared to 3.7 percent in September). Stocks rallied again Wednesday on news that the producer price index fell 0.5 percent. Commentators are no longer debating whether the economy will experience a “soft landing” (i.e., a reduction in inflation without recession). The only question now is when it will arrive. The S&P 500 seems to have decided it’s already here.
But the stock market doesn’t choose presidents. Voters do, and polls continue to show they think the economy is in terrible shape. A Financial Times–Michigan Ross Nationwide Survey conducted November 2–7 is absolutely brutal on this point.
You can cause deflation through tighter controls on the monetary supply. The fed is so scared of deflation that they had been lending out money to banks very cheaply and this has caused the crazy asset bubbles we’re grappling with now. You’ll get spiraling deflation because of crazy heights of inflation. A more controlled process would temper risky behaviors and smooth things out instead of having to deal with stark boom and bust cycles. Cheap money is actually how the great depression happened. Banks would lend money willy nilly and people would throw it at the stock market or other frivolous purchases. These risky “investments” set up the deflation spiral as things had to come back to reality. Deflation was the medicine and you’re pointing at it as if it was the cause. Yes, the transition will be painful, but putting it off will only make it more painful when the piper comes to collect.
Inflation only helps you pay down debts if you make more money to match that inflation. Instead, people are paying 50-100% more for groceries, housing, and vehicles, among many other things. Meanwhile their paychecks are not necessarily matching inflation.
Yeah, they decrease the money supply by rasing interest rates, that’s what they’re doing. And if they go too far they’ll cause a recession. It would be the recession that causes deflation. But now you have a recession. And 50-100% inflation is just simply untrue. And it’s also untrue paychecks aren’t matching inflation right now. Wages have been growing faster than inflation since January.
Comparing my grocery bills to a couple years ago, 50-100% inflation over that period is absolutely true. From what I’ve seen in the housing and vehicle markets, the same holds true. The bulk of the inflation happened in 2022, which is why they changed the inflation calculation from comparing two years back to comparing just one year back. Inflation is apparently slowing down, but it’s still higher than target and wages have quite a bit of catching up to do to reach the total amount of inflation since covid.