Growth or Inflation?
The Federal Reserve states that its goal is to promote employment and economic growth while regulating inflation. As if it is as simple as pulling levers, tweaking a few knobs and dialing up just the right amount of inflation per unit of economic growth. The hubris and ego involved here is incredible.
For the last several years global macro dynamics had allowed the Fed to operate in a highly inflationary manner, while inflation’s effects discretely festered in areas of the ‘services’ economy (like healthcare, regulatory entities, real estate, leisure and hospitality and certain food items). It became clear to me that despite commodities driving down the raw costs of doing business, inflation’s effects had embedded in the services economy when my trash hauler informed of a rate increase due to regulations in the services chain, despite the crash in fuel costs. That is just one little example. Larger examples infect the entire economy.
