Adam Tooze - Chartbook #185 Inflation and distributional conflict - in 2023 not 1973! Also a response to the debate around that Blanchard thread.

Just got the latest Chartbook entry from Adam Tooze who is fast becoming my favourite economic commentator of all time. You can find him on substack here. Watching the whole debate in the finance world about what the path of interest rates will be or discussing whether inflation targets should be 2 or 4 percent strike me as akin to people shifting deck chairs on the deck of a sinking ship. None of these things ever did really make a difference. The "market crash" we witnessed last year was simply the removal of some of the froth through zero interest rates being unwound. There has been literally zero transmission between those changes and the real economy thus far.  We are just at the beginning of a tightening cycle in terms of it's real implications for the real economy. The whole thing is a sham. The real problem we have is that much of the worlds productive capacity is being driven by a system which focuses productive capacity on ridiculous things which are not doing anything to address any of the worlds challenges (weaponry, financialized investment services, technological developments to sell and market products, rockets to take us to Mars, murderous self driving cars). Fortunately large parts of the world have realized this and moved away from it. However this does not include the Anglo-speaking world who also love building weapons. So that will end well.