{"id":348723,"date":"2018-02-17T21:32:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T20:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/3-crazy-things-lewrockwell\/"},"modified":"2018-02-17T21:32:44","modified_gmt":"2018-02-17T20:32:44","slug":"3-crazy-things-lewrockwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/3-crazy-things-lewrockwell\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Crazy Things &#8211; LewRockwell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><i>How can central banks \u201cretrain\u201d participants while maintaining their extreme policies of stimulus?<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Human habituate very easily to new circumstances, even extreme ones.<\/b>\u00a0What we accept as \u201cnormal\u201d now may have been considered bizarre, extreme or unstable a few short years ago.<\/p>\n<p><b>Three economic examples come to mind:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>1. Near-zero interest rates.<\/b>\u00a0If someone had announced to a room of economists and financial journalists in 2006 that interest rates would be near-zero for the foreseeable future, few would have considered it possible or healthy. Yet now the Federal Reserve and other central banks have kept interest rates\/bond yields near-zero for almost nine years.<\/p>\n<p>The Fed has raised rates a mere .75% in three cautious baby-steps, clearly fearful of collapsing the \u201crecovery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What would happen if mortgages returned to their previously \u201cnormal\u201d level around 7% from the current 4%? What would happen to auto sales if people with average credit had to pay more than 0% or 1% for a auto loan?<\/p>\n<p>Those in charge of setting rates and yields are clearly fearful that \u201cnormalized\u201d interest rates would kill the recovery and the stock bubble.<\/p>\n<p><b>2. Massive money-creation hasn\u2019t generated inflation.<\/b>\u00a0In classic economics, massive money-printing (injecting trillions of dollars, yuan, yen and euros into the financial system) would be expected to spark inflation.<\/p>\n<p>As many of us have observed, \u201cofficial\u201d inflation of less than 2% does not align with \u201creal-world\u201d inflation in big-ticket items such as rent, healthcare and college tuition\/fees. A more realistic inflation rate is 7%-8% annually, especially in the higher-cost regions of the US.<\/p>\n<p>But setting that aside, there is a puzzling asymmetry between low official inflation and the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/02\/charles-hugh-smith\/three-crazy-things-we-now-accept-as-normal\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How can central banks \u201cretrain\u201d participants while maintaining their extreme policies of stimulus? Human habituate very easily to new circumstances, even extreme ones.\u00a0What we accept as \u201cnormal\u201d now may have been considered bizarre, extreme or unstable a few short years ago. Three economic examples come to mind: 1. Near-zero interest rates.\u00a0If someone had announced to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-348723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}