gentoobro on Nostr: Interest rates on the floor *caused* inflation. While general government borrowing ...
Interest rates on the floor *caused* inflation. While general government borrowing also causes inflation, as do weird backhanded things like QE, the scale of those pales compared to the inflation caused by 3% mortgages. Dropping interest rates to ease the effects of other inflation is like trying to smother a small grease fire with a truckload of sawdust, as we saw with the various housing bubbles.
The sheep, of course, see the flames go away for a moment and think "gee golly! I'm rich! I just bought a $500,000 house!" without considering that they actually signed up for a 40-year slave contract for house that should have cost $60,000.
If you look at a cost of living graph over time, the two main factors that ballooned up are housing and college, with cars as a growing third problem. All of those have high prices due to low interest loans created out of thin air by the Fed. (Stocks too, but the method of that is rather round-about and not germane to this conversation.)
The sheep, of course, see the flames go away for a moment and think "gee golly! I'm rich! I just bought a $500,000 house!" without considering that they actually signed up for a 40-year slave contract for house that should have cost $60,000.
If you look at a cost of living graph over time, the two main factors that ballooned up are housing and college, with cars as a growing third problem. All of those have high prices due to low interest loans created out of thin air by the Fed. (Stocks too, but the method of that is rather round-about and not germane to this conversation.)