CPI Blast-Off Should Come as No Surprise -- Matthew Johnson #5630

In all actuality is not a huge surprise that PPI increased.  When you consider the economy as a large heavy car, (think 1976 Lincoln Continental) this thing was completely stalled blocking the middle of the road in 2020.  That’s good for no one, so the motivation is “do something!”   The government starting pushing on the car to get it moving.  They print a lot of money, flooding the economy with plenty of liquidity, then interest rates get lowered to 0%, this incentivizes and stimulates spending…little by little the car begins moving but then it really gets moving.   Now the car is travelling too fast and it’s time to pump the brakes…they’re failing.  People start running in front of the car, pushing on it, trying to slow it down but remember it’s a big heavy car…there’s a lot of mass behind it and it’s hard. We can’t expect what’s happening right now to put an immediate stop to the rise in costs and demand.  There’s lag and lots of it. At the same time, what the Fed is doing is dangerous.  It’s adding to inflation and it’s only treating the symptom in my opinion not the illness (supply.)