Jerome Powell, everyone’s favorite, unelected, talking piece of coral that presides over the Federal Reserve took to the stage[1] November 3 in order to spew his typical “Fedspeak.”
An important note before we begin. The Federal Reserve is creating new policies because they cannot be trusted[2]. Two officials were caught in a scandal[3] for their trading practices, obviously profiteering from the pandemic. This has shaken trust for the central bank. Many questions following the invertebrate’s monologue focused on this, and this article doesn’t speak much on that because it’s simple: Don’t trust the Fed.
Powell’s opening comments rivaled the dryness of a Saharan desert, which is a strange place to find coral. Beginning with the topic at hand, he set expectations for “tapering,” or the reduction of quantitative easing, “economic expansion,” and went over some useless statistics that he would himself soon after admit were worthless.
Unemployment
Unemployment is at 4.8%, and Powell admitted this was undershooting the true quantity of unemployment, and then cited his reasoning for this disparity to be… that people are getting older and retiring, or the “aging of population and retirements.” Yep, that’s your central banker. People don’t want to go to work, and those that are working are retiring. Pack it up boys, we’ve figured it out.
Supply Chain Issues
“Bottlenecks and supply chain disruptions” are apparently why we are experiencing inflation. This isn’t the full picture. Here’s a quote from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis[4]: “Inflation is caused when the money supply in an economy grows at [a] faster rate than the economy’s ability to produce goods and services.”
COVID-19 hit and suddenly everyone was trapped at home. Businesses shut down at the whim
