How is the Fed going to cut rates with inflation over 3%?

[TwoCitiesCapital]

I don't disagree with y'all about Biden, but Trump literally invited an angry mob to try and lynch Pence for not overturning election results....

 

And literally took the first steps of undermining democracy by dismantling what 'truth' is and casting anything you see in media, and from official sources, into doubt in favor of believing your own 'truth' - like the election being stolen with literally no evidence turning up this entire time....

[Cigarbutt]

21 hours ago, Dinar said:

@Cigarbutt, I think that there may be three other issues at play.  Companies have gotten better at price discrimination/yield management software, which allows them to squeeze more revenue at 100% margin at very low and perhaps zero volume loss (airlines, concert tickets are good examples.)  Companies may be more aggressive at raising pricing - look at historical price increases for aggregates for instance, and look at the last couple of years and 2024. 

IT investment has also probably allowed massive cost reductions.  Company like EQR are pretty explicit about it, and I am sure that banks/airlines, etc... have also cut out plenty of costs.

Thank you for the additional thoughts.

-----

On a personal level (private ventures), it's been possible to identify and benefit from (relatively) small pockets of potential margin exploitation (in my case based on complex regulations, areas of bureaucratic inefficiencies etc) but opportunities could not be considered permanent and there's always been the constant threat of real competition.

-----

The investment case for EQR (Equity Residential?) (after a 5-10 minutes review..) can be made (various tailwinds, demographic, wealth effect etc combined with an experienced and talented team) but it's not in my zone of comfort (good for you if it works out) and it's hard to discount a comparative advantage based on "tech" in this area if competition is still a thing. 

Opinion: A lot of the corporate pricing power these days is from lack of competition (and access to cheap and easy money).

[cubsfan]

10 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

I don't disagree with y'all about Biden, but Trump literally invited an angry mob to try and lynch Pence for not overturning election results....

 

And literally took the first steps of undermining democracy by dismantling what 'truth' is and casting anything you see in media, and from official sources, into doubt in favor of believing your own 'truth' - like the election being stolen with literally no evidence turning up this entire time....

 

That's an interesting take.

 

No mention of the last 4 years where the Biden administration works to turn this country upside down and use law fare to block his only political opponent from running a Presidential campaign.

 

Nothing to see there.

[John Hjorth]

23 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

 

That's an interesting take.

 

No mention of the last 4 years where the Biden administration works to turn this country upside down and use law fare to block his only political opponent from running a Presidential campaign.

 

Nothing to see there.

 

Mike [ @cubsfan ],

 

It's just the usual modus operandi for your way discussing things in an unordered manner for now years here on CoBF  by instead of introduccing contunterarguments to what was posted here, in casu here by @TwoCitiesCapital was brought to the table for you, by your counterpart discussionswise here, you simply attack the other part with something else.

 

To me, this is called mud sliding.

[cubsfan]

^^^ John - the poster was trying to get at "the truth" about "undermining democracy".

 

You call my response "mudslinging" because you are overly sensitive and not really interested

in "the truth".

 

I prefer to get to the core of the issue by being direct and not mince words - although I meant no insult. Seriously, I have quite a bit of respect for this particular poster. 

 

Give yourself a break from my posts and use the ignore button if it really upsets you.

[Dinar]

@Cigarbutt, I agree re higher profit margins due to less competition.  I do NOT own EQR and am I NOT suggesting that you or anybody else buy it.  

[TwoCitiesCapital]

 

10 hours ago, cubsfan said:

 

That's an interesting take.

 

No mention of the last 4 years where the Biden administration works to turn this country upside down and use law fare to block his only political opponent from running a Presidential campaign.

 

Nothing to see there.

 

I mean I literally said I agree with y'all about Biden...

 

But if one of them is operating within the political apparatus and the decisions can be undone at a later date by others in the same political apparatus 

 

And the other is unleashing angry mobs of violent populism and calling into question the very meaning of truth so he alone can be the purveyor of absolute truth to said angry populist mob regardless of reality/evidence/critical thought would suggest...

 

Then yes, I'll take the former any day.

 

Ideally these wouldn't be our choices, but America is so focused on not "wasting your vote" by supporting an alternative option, but end up wasting their vote on one of two bad ones...

 

Edited April 14 by TwoCitiesCapital

[cubsfan]

Seriously, the biggest contribution from Trump was him exposing a corrupt and dishonest media to Americans. He exposed it and that is somehow so terrible. The media will forever carry the stigma of “Fake News” and trust is unlikely to be restored any time soon.

 

And for that, he is the mortal enemy of an opposition that has no respect for the average American. The country has woken up due to one man.

[Gamecock-YT]

The Germans said the same thing about that one guy too

[changegonnacome]

13 hours ago, cubsfan said:

Seriously, the biggest contribution from Trump was him exposing a corrupt and dishonest media to Americans.

 

Contribution? A coherent society is one based on shared values....shared values can only come from a shared view of the world which involves some consensus around what is true or not....a shared set of 'facts'......we've always had differences of opinion on how to move forward as country...liberal/conservative.....but we at least agreed up until relatively recently where we were on fundamental foundational facts (like who won the last election)...on top of those facts there was competition of ideas about how to move forward adjudicated by voters at elections.

 

Trump's great contribution, seems to me, is a chipping away at the foundations of what makes a coherent society......his contribution was to take a kernel of truth (that the media, reporters, editors, even federal agencies had biases or were outright dishonest at times) and exaggerated and contorted it beyond all proportions such that nobody believes in some common subset of facts anymore in fact he's convinced a whole cohort that everything is rigged top to bottom......... he didn't open up peoples minds as you seem to think....he closed their minds and sent them into an echo chamber that wasn't just biased (like old media) but rather media or his own pronouncements that propagated and promoted a version of reality that simply didn't and doesn't exist.

 

His great contribution is that he gaslit the whole country......sending liberals into the arms of leftist crackpot theories around wokism & the various news outlets that cater to it......and conservatives into the arms of Newsmax, Quanon, deep state and replacement theory....he took a cultural disagreement/debate and turned it into a culture war for his own political ambition......Trump's great contribution is destroying the centre ground in American political life while populating the extremists at both ends of the political divide...it is not a good legacy turning people into tribal lunatics.......Joe Biden has serious serious flaws in his thinking and approach to many things....been wrong more than he's been right on a tonne of issues over decades.....but blowing up the centre ground where all the progress has been made over decades is not one of his follys.

[Gregmal]

5 hours ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Contribution? A coherent society is one based on shared values....shared values can only come from a shared view of the world which involves some consensus around what is true or not....a shared set of 'facts'......we've always had differences of opinion on how to move forward as country...liberal/conservative.....but we at least agreed up until relatively recently where we were on fundamental foundational facts (like who won the last election)...on top of those facts there was competition of ideas about how to move forward adjudicated by voters at elections.

 

Trump's great contribution, seems to me, is a chipping away at the foundations of what makes a coherent society......his contribution was to take a kernel of truth (that the media, reporters, editors, even federal agencies had biases or were outright dishonest at times) and exaggerated and contorted it beyond all proportions such that nobody believes in some common subset of facts anymore in fact he's convinced a whole cohort that everything is rigged top to bottom......... he didn't open up peoples minds as you seem to think....he closed their minds and sent them into an echo chamber that wasn't just biased (like old media) but rather media or his own pronouncements that propagated and promoted a version of reality that simply didn't and doesn't exist.

 

His great contribution is that he gaslit the whole country......sending liberals into the arms of leftist crackpot theories around wokism & the various news outlets that cater to it......and conservatives into the arms of Newsmax, Quanon, deep state and replacement theory....he took a cultural disagreement/debate and turned it into a culture war for his own political ambition......Trump's great contribution is destroying the centre ground in American political life while populating the extremists at both ends of the political divide...it is not a good legacy turning people into tribal lunatics.......Joe Biden has serious serious flaws in his thinking and approach to many things....been wrong more than he's been right on a tonne of issues over decades.....but blowing up the centre ground where all the progress has been made over decades is not one of his follys.

It’s kinda funny but I actually agree with much of this. The question is, did it matter? Wasn’t it inevitable?

 

Trump pissed off the media and liberals because he mastered THEIR game. It enraged them that they couldn’t slander him in the news or leak a video and put an end to his campaign. That had been the liberal way until then, in fact, it still kinda is.
 

There was no question Mitt Romney was the most qualified candidate we ve had for president in decades. And the media turned it into a runaway for Obama using race bait, culture war propaganda, and lies/innuendo. Trump found a way to negate that, and that’s why they all went mental. I’ll still never forget the Presidential Debate where when asked our greatest foreign threat, Romney competently explains that it’s Russia…and Obama, offering nothing but a made for tv quip about “the 1980s called and wants their foreign policy back” and instantly became the winner of that debate…yes, on an arrogant, ignorant, and flat out wrong wisecrack! Now the same outlets that celebrate that “own”…want to cry to us about big bad Russia. Fuck them

Edited April 15 by Gregmal

[Eldad]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

It’s kinda funny but I actually agree with much of this. The question is, did it matter? Wasn’t it inevitable?

 

Trump pissed off the media and liberals because he mastered THEIR game. It enraged them that they couldn’t slander him in the news or leak a video and put an end to his campaign. That had been the liberal way until then, in fact, it still kinda is.
 

There was no question Mitt Romney was the most qualified candidate we ve had for president in decades. And the media turned it into a runaway for Obama using race bait, culture war propaganda, and lies/innuendo. Trump found a way to negate that, and that’s why they all went mental. I’ll still never forget the Presidential Debate where when asked our greatest foreign threat, Romney competently explains that it’s Russia…and Obama, offering nothing but a made for tv quip about “the 1980s called and wants their foreign policy back” and instantly became the winner of that debate…yes, on an arrogant, ignorant, and flat out wrong wisecrack! Now the same outlets that celebrate that “own”…want to cry to us about big bad Russia. Fuck them

Agree with both of you. I think Trump is a pathological liar in the details, but his big picture world view is much closer to the truth. US liberals big picture worldview is tilting towards straight rat poison. It is clear to me a conservative not named Trump will be required to save our country. 

[changegonnacome]

12 minutes ago, Eldad said:

It is clear to me a conservative not named Trump will be required to save our country.

Yep give me Romney or some Romney Jnr. all day long…..my dream is a fiscally conservative and socially centrist candidate for president. 

 

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

Wasn’t it inevitable?

Yep Trump gets too much credit sometimes…he’s a lighting rod for what was already happening…basically the atomization of news into smaller and smaller audiences that required over time, to keep that audience captive , feeding them tribal confirmation bias narratives masquerading as news…..all fundamentally designed to sell more “talk to your doctor about XYX for XYZ” ad slots.

[changegonnacome]

Anyway back to inflation - think the Fed’s problem is what we are seeing now with the Middle East stuff and I describe it as the….”if you can see the line, your too close to the line problem”…3.5% is at the upper upper upper limits of an inflation rate that is playing very close to inflation being a ‘thing’ again….inflation is best when it becomes small enough to be imperceptible to Joe Sixpack…it is not a topic of conversation at the bar or dinner table…..3ish is probably invisible enough too don’t get me wrong…..the issue with 3ish is that an exogenous event like the Middle East blowing up means your a modest supply shock away from a trip back to 4 or 5%…where inflation most certainly becomes a thing again......so you know there's a descent rational to get it down to low 2ish.....but I agree with the general view out there now.....Powell looks like his too chicken to do the right thing....and instead is doing the easy thing.....he's a dove that pretended to be a hawk for a while.......it will be interesting to see, if this hotter numbers keep rolling in, if he has enough mental flexibility to course correct on the cuts he's signalled. 

Edited April 15 by changegonnacome

[Gregmal]

And then we re back to people calling for rate hikes over things like oil prices(zero to do with rates) and housing(the reason housing is bloated is because of rate hikes)…

[changegonnacome]

1 minute ago, Gregmal said:

housing(the reason housing is bloated is because of rate hikes)…

 

We talked about this one before - SuperCore or Made in America inflation as I've referred to it for a couple of years now is where the problem is and remains. Its this prints that accelerating. Its this foundational inflation that has us 'stuck' at something that looks like a persistent 3-handle on headline CPI.

 

To be clear again - this measure which is the problem here......completely & utterly removes the housing distortions from lagged covid rents AND the increased mortgage servicing costs because of higher rates.....this is not just 'going away' ......I know the instinct here is to just throw out the inflation 'hoax'....the reality however is this monetary domestic inflation is sticking around way after supply chains have healed.

[james22]

Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish, thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and working class.

 

The thing is, we had that movement. It was the Tea Party movement. 

 

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/20/donald-trump-political-establishment-elites-tea-party-bourgeois-working-class-column/82047484/

 

I still hear the Tea Party invoked by liberal friends as an example of extremism, despite how calm and collected they were. So few of them even knew that it started in Chicago, on the trading floor, with people upset that they were forced to subsidize failure. It was hopeful and enthusiastic, open to anyone – and the Left treated it like the KKK merged with radical anarchists. The Republicans took their support and generally did nothing.

 

So, people tried something different. Romney was the ultimate nice-guy candidate. Unimpeachable ethics, a proven record of success, and moderate credentials. The Left chewed him up and spat him out. If Abe Lincoln or George Washington rose from the grave and ran for president, they would get the same treatment.

 

Thus, after you send in friendly folks with SUV and pickups, then a philanthropist in a limo, might as well send in a tank. Trump refuses to just take it like a proper Republican; he’s not a model of civility and noble citizenship, he’s a brawler. This is why Tea Party conservatives are flocking to his banner.

 

https://ricochet.com/683441/quote-of-the-day-the-tea-party-movement/

[cubsfan]

^^^. So true. The Tea Party movement was open to everyone - gay, straight, black, white, hispanic, etc

 

What bound it together was a love of liberty and small government. Of course Brooks & Obama needed to destroy it.

[Gregmal]

28 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

 

We talked about this one before - SuperCore or Made in America inflation as I've referred to it for a couple of years now is where the problem is and remains. Its this prints that accelerating. Its this foundational inflation that has us 'stuck' at something that looks like a persistent 3-handle on headline CPI.

 

To be clear again - this measure which is the problem here......completely & utterly removes the housing distortions from lagged covid rents AND the increased mortgage servicing costs because of higher rates.....this is not just 'going away' ......I know the instinct here is to just throw out the inflation 'hoax'....the reality however is this monetary domestic inflation is sticking around way after supply chains have healed.

Yea but the super core stuff is bullshit as is the outdated and academically inspired “dual mandate”. Once we start carving up niche ways to create an “inflation problem”, gives people way too many avenues to run with data, as we ve seen.

 

If the true concern is widespread/broad reaching “inflation”…by far and away the two biggest problems are housing and energy. If the objective is to hit the area most significantly impacting the lives of Americans, especially the average ones, it’s housing. And housing has been made widely inaccessible and unacceptably unaffordable for most, because of the Fed and their rate hike crusade. 
 

These imbeciles are so dumb that it seems they blindly look at some “inflation gauge” and then just go “too high” and simultaneously shout “raise rates”, almost completely oblivious to the cause and effects of such. This is why we narrow down and strip out this or that…it’s nonsense. Fix housing and energy and the “real” inflation is pretty much zero, if not negative. Just because we go “oh services” and act like this is more impactful in a negative way than people’s shelter situation doesn’t make that the truth.

Edited April 15 by Gregmal

[changegonnacome]

8 minutes ago, james22 said:

So, people tried something different. Romney was the ultimate nice-guy candidate. Unimpeachable ethics, a proven record of success, and moderate credentials. The Left chewed him up and spat him out.

 

Kind of agree with this article....however blaming somebody else when things don't work out for you is ironically a very leftist liberal thing to do......surprised to see a conservative blaming others and not taking personal responsibility......the Tea party movement failed....because it failed capture the hearts and minds......blaming Obama is the cowards way out.........Trump captured hearts and minds.........the problem is I'm not sure he believes in anything at all except his ego and his need to be paid attention too.

[Gregmal]

It’s like these Fed guys are so arrogant that they refuse to acknowledge that they can not control inflation if it is caused by certain elements in the economy that they have no control over. So they just ignore it and say “inflation up, raise rates”. It’s hilarious watching this because it just shows an academic deer in the headlights 

[changegonnacome]

2 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

housing has been made widely inaccessible and unacceptably unaffordable for most, because of the Fed and their rate hike crusade. 

 

Listen housing was inaccessible and unaffordable when rates were at zero.....there is fundamentally a housing shortage post GFC....what seems to be the bottle neck in housing is really fetishization of bachlor degress versus doing stuff with your hands...meaning the US is short like a bazillion plumbers...and the avg age of skilled trades construction just keeps rising....suspect AI is gonna lay waste to that shortage...and the moms and dads of America might wake up and realize that the road to a happy life for their kids doesn't have to involve $200k in student debt and swivelling on an office chair all day hoping that you get Bob from accountings job one day if do 60hr weeks for a decade.......

[cubsfan]

9 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Kind of agree with this article....however blaming somebody else when things don't work out for you is ironically a very leftist liberal thing to do......surprised to see a conservative blaming others and not taking personal responsibility......the Tea party movement failed....because it failed capture the hearts and minds......blaming Obama is the cowards way out.........Trump captured hearts and minds.........the problem is I'm not sure he believes in anything at all except his ego and his need to be paid attention too.

 

^^^ That's exactly the point. Obama & media falsely painted the Tea Party as "racists", which destroyed it. Romney, the ultimate nice guy, could never survive this opposition. He was not a fighter.

 

The movement needed someone like Trump, who did not cower in fear at the calls of racism.

Like someone said, Trump beat them at their own game.

 

[Gregmal]

8 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Listen housing was inaccessible and unaffordable when rates were at zero.....there is fundamentally a housing shortage post GFC....what seems to be the bottle neck in housing is really fetishization of bachlor degress versus doing stuff with your hands...meaning the US is short like a bazillion plumbers...and the avg age of skilled trades construction just keeps rising....suspect AI is gonna lay waste to that shortage...and the moms and dads of America might wake up and realize that the road to a happy life for their kids doesn't have to involve $200k in student debt and swivelling on an office chair all day hoping that you get Bob from accountings job one day if do 60hr weeks for a decade.......

ASP being $430k isn’t inaccessible because of plumbers. It’s because Fed went mental on a rate crusade and with 20% down you’re now looking at like $4000 a month for a shit box. Even if prices went back to pre COVID levels, because of mortgage rates being where they are, it’s still massively exclusive for the average person. Also embedded in this is that most Americans haven’t actually had any sort of material wage growth since GFC. And now they start to demand it, and have some leverage to get it, and these academic assholes do what? Ooh wage growth bad lol. Like you can’t even make this shit up. It’s so incompetent at the highest levels that one might think it’s not incompetence and that the game is just rigged.

Edited April 15 by Gregmal

[james22]