Molson Hart

Why not stagflation? The 1960s were a sign of endless trust in Keynesian expansion to the extent that Milton Friedman could say of Richard Nixon "everyone is a Keynesian now". The 2010s are a sign of endless monetary expansion until everyone trusted the Greenspan put. 1/2

Last time it ended in inflation plus rising interest rates. The returns to cash were still lousy (most the time inflation galloped ahead of interest rates). Negative returns were baked in. Why not this time? Serious question from a non-macroeconomist. 2/2

Starting in 2002, we had 1.4 billion Chinese people join the WTO. This dropped the cost of goods way down. Perhaps, were it not for that, we would've had massive in inflation in the US.

I'm not a big fan of the way the feds count inflation. It seems like whenever any one part of the CPI basket gets too expensive, they underweight it in favor of something else which has gotten cheaper

Super anecdotal but watching 90s sitcoms helps with understanding this intuitively. A dinner date in NYC costs $100 30 years ago? I guess there really was no inflation. Wait you paid $800 for a 2 bedroom in Manhattan? Give me a fucking break.