Scratchpad: #Actually, We Are at the Fed's Inflation Target, & Resentment of the Poor by the Rich: 2024-04-26 Fr
A scratchpad….
Economics: Barry Ritholtz looks through the lagged housing components of inflation and concludes that we are at the Fed’s inflation target right now:
Barry Ritholtz: March 2024 State Coincident Indexes Ease: ‘Q1 2024 [seasonally-adjusted Real] Gross Domestic Product expanded at a disappointing 1.6%… lagg[ing] economists’ consensus of 2.4%…. As Bill McBride pointed out in yesterday’s At the Money, lease renewals for rental apartments or homes… were signed either 1 or 2 years ago; Monetary policy doesn’t impact that that all. Swap out OER for the more timely Zillow Rent Index / Apartment List Index, you get a CPI with a 2 handle. Or, just back out lease renewals, and you get the same results. The economy remains robust, inflation is more of a housing issue with some services concerns thrown in. I believe if we had better and more timely CPI/PCE models, the Fed would already be cutting… <https://ritholtz.com/2024/04/march-2024-state-coincident-indexes-ease/>
Neofascism: Fred Clark hits one out of the park:
Fred Clark: Rural White MAGAs & What ‘Woke C.S. Lewis’ Got Wrong: ‘Most resentment doesn’t punch up. Most resentment punches down. The rich resent the poor. The hegemonic majority resents the disenfranchised minority. The enslaved resents the enslaved. The abuser resents the abused. The usurer resents the debtor. The powerful resent the powerless…. The “logical” form of resentment also exists…. But he poor fellow being choked and burdened… isn’t “utterly corrupted” by the “besetting sin” of resentment…. Mainly, overwhelmingly, his concern is simply getting this guy off his back. Tolstoy’s first-person oppressor here, however, is utterly corrupted and wholly consumed by his resentment of the very man he is, present-tense, exploiting and choking…. That perpetual need to keep saying that, to himself and to others, to have to repeatedly assert “I’m not a bad guy, really I’m not!” is, for this man, “some sort of negative experience.” And thus it seems, to him, that resentment is, as Jacobs says, “rational, a reaction based on some sort of negative experience.”… We resent those we have wronged. We resent those we have harmed. We resent those we are harming. If it weren’t for them, after all, we wouldn’t have to spend so much time and energy reassuring ourselves and others that we’re still good people. If it weren’t for our annoying, bothersome victims, we’d be so much happier…. And so we ask for mirth from those we torment, demanding that they “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”… <https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/04/18/rural-white-magas-and-what-woke-c-s-lewis-got-wrong/>