1868

I’m actually starting to wonder if there’s more to this recent anti-index-fund publicity. Is the industry putting forth a PR effort to discredit index funds since they’re in a race to the bottom for fees at this point?

1869

Came across this site that tracks which companies took PPP loans.

https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program/

1870

I’m at a loss for words.

1872

Didn’t we give the airlines like… a gazillion dollars as part of the covid stuff?

1873

Well they’re not gonna use that to pay employees more, they have stocks to buy back or something.

1874

“We can’t find anyone who will do this for a miserable wage, so maybe they’ll do it for free!”

1875

The screeching of inflation! has begun (“out of control spending!”) but this article details the sectors that drove the April jump in the CPI:

Don’t Be Fooled by April's Inflation Jump. It's Being Driven by Reopening Quirks | Barron's

Back in September, Barron’s warned “that the coronavirus pandemic has made the aggregate inflation data mostly useless.” Aggregate indicators are informative only to the extent that the importance of the underlying components are constant over time. Sudden changes in behavior can lead to big swings in individual categories that don’t tell us much about the broader economy. The big drop in airfares and hotel room rates last spring and summer were clearly one-off consequences of a temporary emergency—just like the one-off increases in the prices of meats and household cleaning supplies. Neither one was particularly meaningful for anyone trying to understand what was happening to the price level as a whole.

Something similar is happening now, but in reverse. The consumer-price index rose by 0.8% in April compared with March on a seasonally adjusted basis, vastly exceeding forecasters’ expectations. Most of that increase, however, can be attributed to a few categories that collectively account for just 13% of consumer spending, at least in normal times: used cars and trucks, hotels and motels, airfares, motor vehicle insurance, car and truck rental, admissions to live events and museums, and food away from home.

1876

Also the price index is compared against prices a year ago, which were unusually depressed due to covid. Some of this is just getting back to trendline.

1877

One thing that is funny, is that the GOP is suggesting that the inflation is due to us pumping money into the economy via the COVID stuff. That’ we’re overheating the economy.

But this is in direct conflict with the suggestion that we are somehow crippling the economy (via unspoken means).

If you were afraid of overheating the economy and causing inflation… one way to deal with that would be to… raise taxes.

1878

You just made 74 million heads explode.

1879

1880

Spoken like a true MMT’er :)

1881

That’s pretty much standard keynesianism.

1882

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1883

This can’t be right.
/s

1884

Who knew that people could be incentivized with higher pay? The mind boggles!

Where’s that “mind blown” emoji when you need it?

1885

“Conservative media confirms Biden to blame for out of control inflation.”

1886

They desperately are trying to suggest that Biden is Carter 2.0, which is hilarious, considering that the economy will likely expand at a 4%+ pace in the next few quarters as it opens up more and more.

Yes, inflation will be present, but the Fed has ample tools to deal with that considering interest rates are still at 0%. Remember, interest rates were 10%+ during Carter.

1887

Also the sharp insistence on managing monetary policy to control for inflation of no more than 2% is absolutely an intentional sop to capital class and financial industries, and is in many ways done so at a detriment to working class individuals as it drives decisions that harm them in order to keep this arbitrary target.

1888

They’ve signaled they are open to somewhat higher interest rates temporarily in the name of economic expansion.