That's...not really a “quiet part”, it's the widely acknowledge, overt nature of managing inflation. That the Fed’s dual mandate involves employment and price stability, and that those are in tension because controlling inflation often involves mitigating demand, while promoting employment enhances demand is not viewed as a secret. It’s like Fed 101, and Fed board members (chair or not) very often do not walk on eggshells about it.
Nobody wants the medicine, even if they need it.
Is it implying / could be construed in some negative way? Like, "slow demand" means "poor people need to buy less", or something?
Powell is much more honest than his predecessors in this regard. I commend him for it.
The obsession with this single policy lever is bad, and I hope it changes. But there being little political will to raise rates is a good first step.
Eventually we can leave them at zero, and manage the economy by other means.
I disagree pretty heavily here. Yellen was always honest about the need for monetary policy which would be politically unsavory (which is why her term wasn't renewed). Her delivery was very much designed not to "spook the markets" but I think part of the reason she scared the markets was that she favored long-term stability.
Her words as Treasury Secretary aren't exactly sugar coating things. She's been saying that the impact of the Russian sanctions are going to hurt American as well, and that inflation is probably here to stay in the medium term at least (she's long held the belief that high inflation is an acceptable tradeoff for low unemployment). Granted, those statements are followed up with "we are working on a solution"-type statements, but I don't see many promises.
It could also reduce demand by making it more expensive to buy things. Sure, that will probably have a side-effect of increasing unemployment, but that unemployment isn't the goal. The goal is to make it cost more to do things so less people want to do them.
The actual truth is to the extent raising interest rates does anything at all to prices, it is via reducing employment.
The goal of increased interest rates is to make borrowing more expensive, which means business and consumers would cut down on investment or loans, since those are good mechanisms for money creation. It slows the velocity of money and therefore demand.
Of course, we also have supply shocks right now which are causing price increases due to scarcity as well.
And the business that don't get as easy credit will not hire as many people. Let's not hide behind the abstractions that exact causal mechanism here.
It's usually the same barely employed marginalized folks that are "last to higher, first to fire" too. This is empirically established.
Some service workers loose my job, but stupid investment still pours into blockchain bullshit? What a crude lever this monetary policy is!
It would be much better to adopt some new more precise levers. For example, the rules on the collateral for loans could be changed to pop a bubble. Or Gasoline prices should go up way more (with a new UBI to compensate) to encourage rationing of that key thing while not effecting demand overall.
Basically, the policy should match the underlying cause in the supply shocks. Treating all inflations as all the same is crude and punishes poor people extra for no justifiable reason.