It is not deflation unless you put price in front of it. Prices are going down because with the inflation wages are not going up and people cannot buy what is out there. There is an accelerating amount of money in the system. It is all bouncing back and forth between the Fed and various financial institutions and is being used to prop up the Dow which is probably actually in collapse but for the periodic injection of new money that the Fed shovels into the banks and the banks cannot lend so they feed it into the stock market when the price drops. Perhaps it is at the direction of the Fed or perhaps it is just because there is nothing else to do with it.
Prices are going down because with the inflation wages are not going up and people cannot buy what is out there.
That doesn't make any sense.
There is an accelerating amount of money in the system. It is all bouncing back and forth between the Fed and various financial institutions and is being used to prop up the Dow which is probably actually in collapse but for the periodic injection of new money that the Fed shovels into the banks and the banks cannot lend so they feed it into the stock market when the price drops. Perhaps it is at the direction of the Fed or perhaps it is just because there is nothing else to do with it.
This, I agree with.
There has been and continues to be an Worldwide slowdown of economic activity since 2008. Virtually every Central Bank around the world has been doing the only thing they can to reverse this slowdown. Cut rates, QE**** which is basically printing money, all to create "Inflation". It's the only thing that "They" can do to fight the Deflation that has gripped the world. It's artificially, but it's all they can do.
It's like a sinking ship that continues to take on water. The Central Bankers roll out the big pumps (QE*, Etc) from time to time to keep the ship from sinking faster. But it's not their job to address leak. All they can do is buy more time.
IMHO, it is very easy to attack the FED and blame them for some inevitable "Hyper-Inflation" that is sure to occur. In the meantime, if you look a a chart of the CRB index you will see no Inflation.
The folks at the FED and other Central Banks are not stupid or misguided. These are some of the smartest economic guys in the world. They know exactly the what the problem is and are using the only tools they have available to them.
There was a time when their "Pumps" were only needed occasionally. Then they ran those "Pumps" no-stop, but the ship keeps sinking. We are now entering a phase in which their pumps are maxed out and it's not working at all.
The US FED's recent rate increase looks to me as an experiment to see if they can change the behavior of some businesses and consumers. I'm not at all sure it will work.
There are a number of factors that influence our overall economy and the least of which that is considered by many people is that of human nature. Hope or optimism drives an economy more than most people credit.