First, you cannot trust the government inflation numbers-these are manipulated.
Second: check out what you are paying for stuff like milk and bread-our prices are up hugely for milk (over 13% this year).
Producers start to raise prices on infrequent-purchase items first, and then move on to frequently purchased items.
The delay effect is one reason why Obama’s spending spree hasn’t caused inflation-yet.
By the end of his term, we will have inflation and stagflation that will make the Carter years look like paradise.
A large part of inflation is the price of gas. It has been relatively stable this year. It causes most other goods to have price raises to cover the cost hike. But even without the gas hiking, many store bought products are going up.
Home prices are also dropping. That too disguises the inflation in every day life.
Gasoline and housing are major parts of a persons budget. When they are lowering, the rest of the inflated items are not enough to offset them. The appearance is no inflation, while life proves otherwise.
On the other hand, the rising price of milk is offset by the decreasing cost of housing and gasoline, so the cost of living is holding steady.
Or am I missing something?
Huh, I guess there’s not that much disagreement.
I had misunderstood your position.
My understanding is that serious analysts were receiving questions from their clients regarding, yes, hyperinflation which they politely batted back. It was unclear to me whether the confusion was due to economics or the clients’ confused definition of hyperinflation.
A highly unlikely scenario, at least for core inflation. It’s not impossible. But I’ve yet to see a serious explanation of why the Fed can’t reverse course if core inflation hit, say, 4%. Have you? (That’s a real question, btw.)
Yeah and I had to retract that portion of my post, above. :smack:
If this is the case, the OP misunderstands Krugman. He’s really a mainstream economist: he worked for Reagan in the 1980s and argued against Lester Thurow in the 1980s and 1990s.
That said, fears of hyperinflation were real among the batshit (which is what I was pitting). Try googling “Hyperinflation” and “Helicopter Ben”. Lots of wingnuttery from 2007. IIRC, they essentially gazed at the monetary base (which indeed shot up lock a rocket) and concluded that inflation was around the corner. But their worldview didn’t take into account economic slack, capacity utilization or unemployment. Alas, I doubt whether they’ve learned any lessons.
Maybe you can parse this 2009 article for me: Brace For Hyper-Inflation by Henry Blodget.
Of course he doesn’t pin a number onto his fearmongering, so I have no idea what he’s actually predicting. At best, he misuses the term, “Hyperinflation”.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t consider Blodget to be especially credible. But he, like many other shouters, certainly has a platform. Anyway, that’s whom I’m pitting.
No biggee.
I’m sure they were, but that’s different than predicting it.
A highly unlikely scenario, at least for core inflation. It’s not impossible. But I’ve yet to see a serious explanation of why the Fed can’t reverse course if core inflation hit, say, 4%. Have you? (That’s a real question, btw.)
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Sure. Short to intermediate treasuries will either need to paid off or rolled over. Demand has much to do with Treasury rates. Low demand means either high rates will have to paid, or the principal will have to paid off, either of which will have to come from the government coffers. If spending is out of control, or tax receipts or down or any of a number of other scenarios occur, it could be difficult for the Government to maintain the Treasury market without significant inflation.
[google]That said, fears of hyperinflation were real among the batshit (which is what I was pitting). Try googling “Hyperinflation” and “Helicopter Ben”. Lots of wingnuttery from 2007. IIRC, they essentially gazed at the monetary base (which indeed shot up lock a rocket) and concluded that inflation was around the corner. But their worldview didn’t take into account economic slack, capacity utilization or unemployment. Alas, I doubt whether they’ve learned any lessons.
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As I understood the idiotic OP, he was pitting Conservative Wall Street analysts. What you are discussing seems to be articles and fear mongering by reporters, not analysts who get paid based on their history of being correct and actionable.
If your argument is that there was a lot of fear mongering going on in the press and from commentators than I agree.
He’s not really an analyst any more, is he? I don’t think he’s even an economist. Recall that Blodgett was an internet equity analyst right before the blow up of 2000.
For better or worse, I don’t think of him as an analyst or an economist. He’s a writer trying to sell content.
That’s the difference. On Wall Street, analysts get paid based on the utility and accuracy of their commentary and predictions. If they tend to be sensationalist and wrong, they don’t last long. By contrast a reporter or commentator isn’t trading on accuracy. They’re trading on they’re ability to garner readers for advertisers. In this latter context, being sensationalist helps quite a bit, and being wrong often doesn’t matter.
At any rate, I wouldn’t use Blodgett’s piece as an example of serious analysis. ymmv.
BTW my problem with Krugman is that he tries to be both. He is and can be a serious economist, but he’s also selling papers, and I think his academic cred often takes a back seat to his politics or desire to get noticed.
Ok, for the purposes of this thread, we’re simply in agreement. No, I don’t think Blodgett is a serious guy either. Off-topic quibbles and clarifications follow.
Forecasters sometimes claim that “It’s not the number, it’s the story.” For example, before he become Fed Chairman, Greenspan’s shop put out some pretty inaccurate forecasts. But because he put forth a sensible monetarist perspective, subscribers were interested in what he had to say anyway. Forecasts can be an adjunct to commentary as much as a stand-alone product.
We’re getting off topic here but… I would think that low aggregate demand, in the absence of a supply shock, would keep treasury rates low – markets tend to fly to safety during recession.
If you meant demand for Treasuries – well yes, lower bond prices are identical to higher yields. And a greater supply of treasuries (due to exploding deficits) could put upper pressure on rates. But increases in interest rates tend to lead to lower investment spending (residential and otherwise) which tends to cause disinflation or even deflation in the broader economy.
There are arguments whereby higher inflation expectations lead to higher long term rates. But I wouldn’t think that the causality could run in the opposite direction.
Anyway, thanks for the comments. Krugman is a fine economist and a fine writer. I might concede though that there’s a tension between those 2 endeavors.
Agreement is nice.
It’s a reasonable point, reasonably put. I agree.
I’ll try to give you two scenarios as clarification.
#1 Inflationary scenario, brought on or exacerbated by treasury market.
The short and intermediate treasuries that are out there now, either need to be paid off or refinanced. Right now, the rates are almost moot. They are so low, that the amount of paper out there almost doesn’t matter in terms of carrying costs.
Rates and demand are not the exact same thing. The other component is that the government has a need to borrow money, too. If at a given interest rate the demand is below the government’s need, then they must a. pay off those treasuries, or b. issue them at a higher rate for which there will be a demand (there’s a c. too, but we won’t go into that.)
If the government’s need stays the same, yet demand has dropped, than a. would mean that they would need to print a lot more money (which is inflationary,) and b. would mean they would need to print more money to pay the interest (which is also inflationary.) In this scenario all the money that the government is borrowing to create a stimulus ultimately comes back as inflationary. The government is not able to stop that inflation because those treasuries keep coming due and it increases the money supply to pay them off or refinance them.
You said:
“increases in interest rates tend to lead to lower investment spending (residential and otherwise) which tends to cause disinflation or even deflation in the broader economy.”
Let’s qualify that. Increases in monetary policy can have that effect. They also have an effect on the bond market in general, but they do not control it. While higher interest in the bond market can dampen capital expenditures, they are also often the result of increased capital expenditures. Increasing interest rates can occur in a healthy and rapidly growing economy that is hungry for capital.
#2 Stimulus and deflation
The government spends enormous amounts on stimulus, but the capital it puts out there doesn’t get spent. It gets saved. The money it invests in projects does not inflate through the economy, because the companies and people that receive those dollars don’t use them to buy new equipment or homes or what have you. Instead, they use them to pay down debt, or they simply save them. Rates may be very low, but the entities that would potentially want to take advantage of them simply can’t gain access to the money (i.e. while rates are low, it’s not as easy as it once was to qualify for a mortgage.)
You have the government spending tons of money on projects and making capitol cheap for banks but that money doesn’t get spent again. The stimulus, instead of purchasing goods and services and inflating through the economy simply disappears into a black whole of savings, cash reserves, and debt reduction.
I guess by definition such a stimulus is “inadequate.”
So Scylla, do you think another stimulus package is needed? (Maybe you already responded to this question; if so, sorry.)
I know this is the Pit, but just a quick academic point, measuring inflation is of course an extremely hard thing. Why? Well it is simply hard to compare a basket of goods from one period to the next. Are cars more expensive now than ten years ago? Yes, but then again they are also safer, tend to get better gas mileage and last longer. What about TVs? Yes ten years ago you were probably buying a 40 inch television for $700, now you are paying $1400, but then again those TVS could not be more different. Then there is a substitution problem. If, for example the price of beef goes up a lot then it could be said there is inflation. But of course when stuff becomes expensive folks switch to chicken for example. Of course there is ways to help mitigate some of these effects, but the truth is that minor inflation and minor deflation are hardly distinguishable from each other. In fact I would guess that any point estimate of inflation is probably reflecting a negihborhood of price chage +/- three percent (no i don’t have any acadmic evidence, this is the pit so I am winging it).
I don’t think there’s anything controversial about my mentioning of “conservatives.” I can see how “mainstream financial analysts” might be misunderstood, though–I wasn’t really talking about people who do analysis for Wall St firms, but rather about news commentators who are regularly billed as “financial analysts.”
Krugman is certainly not the only economist who was concerned about a lack of stimulus. There were others, like Roubini, Baker, etc.
I suppose there are two ways of looking at this: one is that economics departments around the country tend be more conservative (though still generally legitimate) in their political-economic outlook; the other is that the “analysts” who appear on TV are overwhelmingly politically motivated and wrong. Jonathan Hoenig being a prime example.
I have a perhaps simpler deflationary scenario. The admin’s economists call for a $1.4 trillion package in Dec 2008, which is whittled down to $1.2 trillion by the OMB, just under $1 trillion by Rahm who didn’t like scary numbers before President Snowe finally settled on $800 billion. The forecasts get worse by March 2009, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
More generally, you can increase stimulus by choosing initiatives with higher multipliers or by spending more/taxing less.
Anyway, we’ve had disinflation for the past 2 years. As inflation drops, real interest rates fall with them, and monetary policy loses traction. We are in the midst of a disturbing spiral. I’ve given the Obama admin high praise in many contexts, but I fear that they’ve screwed the pooch on stimulus. We’ve avoided depression: whether we can avoid a Japanese-style lost decade is another matter.
I don’t think you’re going to get inflation from a solvency crisis, at least in the way you say. If the Treasury has troubles selling its bonds, yes the Fed could conceivably have to step in (though this scenario would be more plausible if the debt/gdp ratio was pushing 150%). But they would do so only after rates shot up, right? And if the 10 year bond went to 8%+ that would tend to depress aggregate demand, right?
More generally, the only way you’re going to get stagflation is with either a nasty oil shock (worse than the 1970s because the economy is more service oriented now) or with a sudden collapse of the dollar. To get stagflation you need to have input costs spike up.
A US currency collapse seems unlikely now, as US debt is denominated in dollars and Japan and Europe don’t seem substantially safer. The world of 2020 or 2030 might be different though. Anyway, I think contemporary doom-mongers (a respectable profession, when practiced with care) need to focus on the dollar.
That said, we had double digit inflation in the 1970s due to a combination of supply shocks and a less sophisticated Federal Reserve than we have today. Then again, our fiscal policy was better at that time…
Well, then it’s a good thing that dozens of economists have studied the matter for 50 years+, right?
Guidelines for Quality Adjustment of New Vehicle Prices: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiautoqaguide.pdf
Hedonic Quality Adjustment in the U.S. CPI for Audio and Video Equipment:
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiaudio.htm
Paasche and Laspeyres price indices
A three percentage point annual error bound sounds high.
I meant “Stagflation with inflation in the teens.” I did not mean “…a stagnating economy while core inflation rises from 1% to 2%.”
You are missing the budget difference between milk and gasoline. Many people spend 40 to 80 bucks a week on gas. That would buy a lot of milk. So the budget impact is not offset by milk prices rising.
Yes, the economy has not turned on a dime but it has turned and the turning started shortly after the stimulus.
Tax cuts are no worse than increased spending. Its where you cut the taxes. If we had a payroll tax cut for a year, it would have a pretty significant stimulative effect, it would be fairly progressive AND we can even get conservatives to jump on board.
Well, then what business did they have making those sort of projections? Conservatives are using the absence of the 8% unemployment rate like the absence of WMDs. They basically say that they were forced into supporting the stimulus because of the specter of 10% unemployment (kinda like saying mushroom cloud) and we got 10% unemplyment anyways. We shouldn’t have tried to sugar coat the situation and just told people that we needed a huge massive stimulus package in the first place.
It wasn’t politically impossible.
During the health care debate, some people were upset that Obama seemed to be taking his eye off the economy to deal with health care. Others responded “What more can he do?”
Well if he spent HALF the political capital that he spent on health care on a larger stimulus package isntead, I bet he would have gotten it.
I am not convinced it has really turned at all. It is not because the stimulus did not work, it did. It was just not large enough to turn things around.
Small businesses are where hiring occurs. The banks will not shake loose the tax money the government gave them to get the economy working. Obama can not force them to do the right thing.
It is not too late to take over a bank or two and get the economy moving again.The banks have no interest in helping the economy as long as they are guaranteed to be able to make lots of money without the risk of lending to small business.
He can’t because its not. there is some temporary government employment for the census and stuff but even THAT is somethigng that needs doing and provides value to the economy and income (however temporary) to the workers.