Best Of

Trump could do the funniest thing.

Weren’t you saying that raising interest rates wasn’t how inflation came back down?

The fed’s “independence” is what got us to $37 trillion in debt.

H desperate these days.

Well no shit.
Israel had free reign over Iran to do whatever they wanted. Why else would they agree to a ceasefire if the objectives weren’t complete?

Horse Paste

I overheard some white teenagers using the N word outside of Walmart last year and they basically lol when I had words for them. They called me gramps as I was scolding them until my wife jumped in between me and these 3 idiots. Late teens dipshits … I mentioned to these wigas that they didn’t have the balls to use the N word in certain parts of San Diego.

The importance of an independent Fed was cemented for most economists after the extended inflation spike of the 1970s and early 1980s. Former Fed Chair Arthur Burns has been widely blamed for allowing the painful inflation of that era to accelerate by succumbing to pressure from President Richard Nixon to keep rates low heading into the 1972 election. Nixon feared higher rates would cost him the election, which he won in a landslide.

Paul Volcker was eventually appointed chair of the Fed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, and he pushed the Fed’s short-term rate to the stunningly high level of nearly 20%. (It is currently 4.3%). The eye-popping rates triggered a sharp recession, pushed unemployment to nearly 11%, and spurred widespread protests.

Yet Volcker didn’t flinch. By the mid-1980s, inflation had fallen back into the low single digits. Volcker’s willingness to inflict pain on the economy to throttle inflation is seen by most economists as a key example of the value of an independent Fed.