Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell calls inflation ‘frustrating.”
Only a multi-millionaire like Powell would call it frustrating. Most US consumers would call it “devastating.”
Look at home prices, natural gas, gasoline and food prices since The Fed turned on the money pump to combat the Covid shutdown by government. Well, at least food price growth has slowed, but that is more that offset by natural gas (heating) costs skyrocketing.
Rent? That too has zoomed upwards, although Powell likely isn’t worried about his rent rising by 11.5%.
I wonder if Powell is frustrated by banks parking their money at the Fed’s reverse repo facility? Ninety-two participants on Thursday placed a total of $1.605 trillion at the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility, in which counterparties like money-market funds can place cash with the central bank. The previous record, set the day before, was $1.416 trillion. Thursday’s leap was the biggest one-day increase in usage since mid-June.
Biden blames “greed” for rising prices, Powell is “frustrated” by bottlenecks. But why pump trillions into the economy when you know there are bottlenecks? Or meatpacking firms are “greedy”?
