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Comment by g42gregory | Hacker News Reader

Same people who say inflation is under control?

They very specifically say inflation is not "under control" which is why they have not lowered interest rates recently. It was almost under control until Trumpty Dumpty started his corrupt monkey wrenching with tariffs.

As I recall, they were saying the inflation was under control 2019-2024, during which real inflation was around 40% (not annual but aggregate for 4 years).

Not sure if you don't know the difference between say and said or that inflation is measured as a yearly rate and not aggregate. Maybe a language barrier issue. 2019 and 2020 inflation was under 2% (target) each year. I agree with Elizabeth Warren and most other observers that they were late to raise interest rates. But they did start raising interest rates in early 2022 (but later and slower than they should have -- peaked early 2023). Regardless, have a great day!

2019 to 2024 is five years, not four.

Not sure if the 40% is real, but if so, it annualizes to 6.96% across five years. I don't know if that's considered high or not.

If we’re being pedantic, it’s actually somewhere between 4 years and 2 days, to 5 years and 364 days, 2024 was a leap year.

I sure don’t feel like I added anything to the discussion. Do you?

I was curious about the annualized rate when I read the original comment, so if nothing else, I think that was a constructive addition.

> I don't know if that's considered high or not.

The target has been a 2% long-term average (although there has been recent language indicating a shift towards "just try for 2% going forward"). It peaked at something like 9%, which hadn't been seen in decades. Nothing compared to e.g. Weimar Germany, Brazil circa 1990, or even modern-day Argentina; but undesirable and concerning.

The same people who didn't see the financial crisis of 2008.

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