USS Enterprise pilots who successfully dive-bombed the Japanese carrier fleet @ Midway tell the story: "last meal" at 4AM, adrenaline of manning planes, taking off from ship, finding the fleet, the fight itself & treacherous return. Fascinating! #VJDay75
"So that morning... way ahead of dawn... around 4 o'clock in the morning. We came down and had steak & eggs for breakfast... The chiefs really knew when there was going to be a real battle... When you had steak & eggs you knew you were in for a real bad day."
"Then you start manning your planes, & you know that you... you are going up there and you are going to have a problem. And you know you're gonna have a problem, that's why you're there. So... that gets the old adrenaline pumping & the old heart begins to pound pretty fast."
"I said they're supposed to be here, they're not here. What are we gonna do now because we're almost at the point of no return... and he [squadron leader Wade McClusky] went another 15 minutes and everybody... everybody was getting nervous."
"Things can get impressed on your mind, so that an image you saw yrs & yrs ago, you can see clearly again. And just as you & I are sitting here, I can see just as clearly, that Japanese ship formation down there, as I saw it that day." --Admiral (then ENS) Lew Hopkins (1919-2008)
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"Transitory" is a term that the Fed introduced. It was the basis for their initial view that the post-Covid inflation was not the kind of inflation that warranted a monetary response.
The reason that the Fed stayed the course on QE/ZIRP when monthly core PCE ran past target in early-mid 2021 was that they thought it would soon subside, and that pushing against it would jeopardize employment while delivering no meaningful benefit to price stability.
Their sensitivities at the time were informed by the experience of late 2018, where, in their view, they overtightened and almost caused a recession. They didn't want to repeat that episode, especially after a traumatic societal experience like Covid.
🧵Charts of real foreign exchange rates of various foreign indices. High value = expensive currency, low value = cheap currency, measured wrt real purchasing power:
There's obviously a sense in which this statement is true, but it relies on a definition of money that can be unnecessarily broad and confusing IMO, particularly when trying to understand the constraints faced by a bank.
If it's true that, by issuing loans, banks can create money out of thin air, then why wasn't SVB able to save itself with this power? Why didn't it just lend money to itself & use that money to pay off its depositors?
It's better IMO to think of money as *base* money--in a fiat system, balances w/ the issuing entity (e.g., the Fed), and in a physical monetary system, the physical thing itself (e.g., in a gold-based system, the actual gold).
There are already mechanisms, outside of standing, for dealing w/ a large pool of potential plaintiffs. There have to be for the system to function, since, even under the current test, it's possible for an extremely large number of people to have standing on a given issue.
Look at Obergefell (gay marriage) as an example. With over a million US same-sex couples, how many discrimination cases could have been constructed similar to that case? There were, in fact, several cases--the court just grouped them together. No reason that couldn't happen here.
Of all arguments against rate hikes, the Erdogan-style "rate hikes constrict supply" argument is by far the weakest. Can't speak to the empirical evidence for it, b/c there is no evidence, anywhere, in any economy. But analytically, it's just sloppy.
Companies that are producing into critical shortages have the tailwinds of pricing power & elevated profit at their backs. Of all potential borrowers, they are the least threatened by increases in funding costs, which are a small side consideration relative to their windfalls.
What may constrain them, as w/ O&G at the current moment, is confidence that the current pricing power and level of profitability will be sustained over the necessary term. But that's a different matter, not primarily contingent on interest rates.
Proposal to make MMT symmetrically-credible wrt aggregate demand management:
Retirement funds for all citizens. 100% in I-bonds. Fed specifies what % of monthly income gets paid into it, by bracket. Crucially, not a tax. Rather, "Mandatory Saving."
Funds can only be withdrawn under the following circumstances:
(1) 10K per year after age 67, or if disabled.
(2) Qualifying Medical Emergency.
Remaining funds bequeathed. Idea is to make people want to get money out of it if they can. For stimulus, Fed can release specific amounts of it for discretionary use (eg, $1K check). Fed can also cut % to zero, or set negative by putting own profit or treasury funding into it.