mr.h
I hate F$U and ND
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2013
- Messages
- 9,850
We are still producing oil, gas and coal, thanks to Manchin. Geopolitics is creating spikes in gas prices. We have depend on OPEC, Russia is punishing Europe, because of Ukraine, and Iran and Venezuela are pieces of ****.There are multiple reasons for our trade deficit, but it should be a national policy to reduce it, especially against a country like China.
Two of the biggest inflation components are oil and housing. Our Federal and many state governments have a war on oil. Regardless of how you feel about climate change, short and medium term we are economically killing ourselves. Other than through a severe recession, oil will only keep going up, year after year.
Housing is similar. The "reforms" passed after the Great Recession made it very difficult for banks to lend and mortgages to be made, etc. Couple that with all of the regulatory requirements at all levels, and its only generally profitable to build A housing in red states. So we have a severe shortage of housing, especially below A, which only gets worse year and year.
So to summarize, unless we change our policies/regulations on housing and fossil fuels, we are condemning ourselves to high inflation,
We need to move on ASAP. Housing was causing lumber, metal and everything else, that is needed, to go sky high. The Fed knew that rising interest rates would crush the housing market. Again, I don’t think we need to go down to 2% inflation. We are already seeing retail lowering prices because they are overstocked. This is a normal economic cycle, aggravated by a war and supply shortages caused by covid. [supply and demand]. We kept interest rates low for too long and now we are paying the price of a prolonged quantitative easing. With all that said, inflation is stubborn and is difficult to reduce without pain.