dan5138 t1_iyduonh wrote on November 30, 2022 at 5:46 PM

I mean it feels engineered, kinda funny how we have a major recession roughly every 10 years.

My question is why can't the fed rate be continually adjusted? I mean it was super obvious what was going to happen. Shut down the economy because covid, then as soon as we have a vaccine, open it up and turn on the money printer. Not to mention giving corporations 600 billion for free. The moratorium on student debt probably helped inject quite a bit of cash too. But wait we just stimulated the economy and increased demand without resolving supply issues. Then the fed just sat on their hands and kept rates low... I mean is anyone surprised the result was inflation?

With all the technology available today, along with emerging technologies. Why can't the rate constantly change by fractionally small rates overnight? I feel like we have enough information available to model the economy and keep things moving along. Why are we dependent upon a bunch of geriatrics to determine rates?

Perhaps the people at the top are afraid of change? Perhaps current systems benefit them too much to change? Why is the banking system in the US run by 50 year old software? What about winning a popularity contest qualifies someone to make decisions on policies and governance?

Lucr3tius t1_iydvdbr wrote on November 30, 2022 at 5:50 PM

>I feel like we have enough information available to model the economy

I disagree. Analysts are frequently wildly off in their predictions for metrics like GDP, Job Growth, CPI etc... Now it could be argued that they're playing the "consumer confidence" game and they know they're full of shit just painting a rosy picture, but I'm more inclined to believe that they're simply morons. If it was just a consumer confidence game and they really knew what the under the hood situation looks like in the economy they wouldn't lose so much money.

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydwsjc wrote on November 30, 2022 at 5:59 PM

Yeah I mean they can't even accurately model weather for more than a few days. Why would they be able to accurately model the behavior of millions of people?

My background is in electrical engineering, and in math they call this "sensitivity to initial conditions" which simple means if any of your variables in your model are not instantiated perfectly, the entire system diverges. Modeling an entire economy is the definition of chaos.