Thread by @tomselliott

Some select questions that reporters and politicians would ask @federalreserve’s Jerome Powell if they weren’t all economically illiterate. /1

Please explain the mechanism by which you think interest rates lower than the rate of inflation will bring down inflation? /2

How are artificially suppressed interest rates not simply a form of psychological manipulation that destroys the market’s price discovery for interest and thus stimulates excess debt? /3

Can you cite a single historical example of a country that swapped money (gold/silver) for fiat currency and survived longer than 40-50 years? /4

You keep talking about your goal of continuing inflation indefinitely at a rate of at least 2 percent. How does stealing 2 percent of every paycheck benefit the average American? /5

Can you cite a single example from the entire course of human history in which the kind of currency debasement you’ve undertaken in your tenure hasn’t resulted in economic collapse? /6

More simply, what is the historical example of a successful money printing campaign that you’re trying to emulate? /7

Why should anyone buy Treasury bills when we’re currently defaulting on the debt? Anyone who bought a t-bill in 2019 surely didn’t plan on losing money when being paid back in 2022 dollars that have lost at least a third their value? /8

Already countries are wisely stopping buying American debt. More than half the govt is funded through deficit spending. Is your plan to ramp up money printing once the bond market collapses? /9

Why aren’t you sounding the alarm about the obvious debt-fueled crisis barreling towards us? Once rates raise enough to start slowing inflation, the Treasury’s interest payments will account for the majority of tax revenue, and then the govt collapses. What then? /10

To retirees seeing their life savings being wiped away before their eyes, would you like to at least apologize? /11

How will it feel if current trends hold and you go down in history as the man who officially destroyed the U.S. dollar — the reserve currency of the world economy? /12

You’ve gotten every major call wrong since you’ve been chairman of the Federal Reserve. Shouldn’t a sense of humility compel you to resign? Or at least admit you don’t understand why your theories aren’t panning out in reality? /13