Word to the audience here, many of whom are in a similar position. Please just keep quiet about it.
Not because that's the decent thing to do while other people are struggling, there's a technical reason I'll explain.
The Fed's inflation target is to stimulate "job growth". That is a euphemism for debasing money (via money supply expansion , aka QE & other tactics) so that people have to work harder.
What it also means is that people who may be comfortable managing life & responsibilities with partial work or early retirement are forced back into the workplace.
Sure it's great you have 7 figures of assets and are outside of the crashing wave. But the entire workforce & those at 1-1.5 Σ are running on a treadmill that's increasing in velocity.
the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.
Your advice is useful in a social context - friends and colleagues are all in different life circumstances.
The Fed and other central banks can see aggregate asset values, productivity, and spending in the economy. Lots of money is being spent by the wealthy.
> the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.
I hope federal banks are smart enough to not base monetary policy of anecdotes
Federal banks don't make decisions, people who work at federal banks do. And people often do make decisions based on anecdotes. Especially if they already support an idea that were already in favor of. So, yeah.
They have a ways to go. And they just announced they would be slowing the pace of the quantitative tightening.
What are the odds they get back to the pre-great recession trend line before the next crisis that demands quantitative easing? (Hint: the odds are zero).
> the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.
If the FED used these articles for its policy, I really don't see a way out of this.
Warren Buffet famously used private underwear sales indicators as an economic bellwether .
Billions of dollars moved because people were or were not buying underwear.
Economists are extremely sensitive to consumer behavior. The abstract indicators like CPI, WFPR, M2/M3 etc are trailing indicators not leading indicators for them.
workforce participation among meaningful segments is nearly 5% below the peak. "retirement" isn't just boomers taking vacations. Lack of participation is due to part time work, and borderline "disability", and a dozen other qualitative factors that are influenced by price pressure (taxes & cost of living)
I live in an older community where people are forced back to work due to skyrocketing property taxes & cost of living increases.
The Boomers have sacrificed so much for us the least we could do is orient the entire economy around them for a few short decades they have left. Imagine if they had to sell their houses to pay for needed labor (higher wages) in old age and some young family (yuck) moved in? Better they reverse mortgage it so Blackrock can rent it out to that family after they die.
If you think the Fed is trolling HN/Twitter to figure out how to set monetary policy for the entire country/realistically the whole world, you are living in la la land.
The fed hasn’t done QE for years. I’ve seen literally any policy move they make characterized as some sort of conspiracy by the gold bugs on here. They are tightening the money supply right now and have been for some time.
Not because that's the decent thing to do while other people are struggling, there's a technical reason I'll explain.
The Fed's inflation target is to stimulate "job growth". That is a euphemism for debasing money (via money supply expansion , aka QE & other tactics) so that people have to work harder.
What it also means is that people who may be comfortable managing life & responsibilities with partial work or early retirement are forced back into the workplace.
Sure it's great you have 7 figures of assets and are outside of the crashing wave. But the entire workforce & those at 1-1.5 Σ are running on a treadmill that's increasing in velocity.
the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.