How COVID-era monetary policy changed everything | Joseph Politano
“Understanding more about monetary policy and the economic regime that you’re living under can help ease some of the fundamental uncertainties [that have been] prevalent since COVID, and help you make better decisions in your day-to-day life.”
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In the wake of the pandemic, our economy entered into a new era marked by supply chain shortages, rapidly rising inflation, and a sharp increase in interest rates. And consumers, businesses, and governments are more uncertain than they’ve ever been.
It’s impossible to understand the changes that we’ve gone through over the last four years and, in a broader sense, over the last two decades without understanding the shifts in monetary policy over that time period, says Joseph Politano, an economic analyst, a data journalist, and the writer behind Apricitas Economics.
We interviewed Politano on April 30th, 2024 and he explained this global economic shift.
Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/the-big-think-interview/joseph-politano/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description
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About Joseph Politano:
Joseph Politano is a Financial Management Analyst at the Bureau of Labor Statistics working to support the Labor Market Information and Occupational Health and Safety surveys that BLS conducts. He writes independently about economics, business, and public policy for a better world at apricitas.substack.com.
32 Comments
Republican presidents cause depressions and recession. I got tired of checking when I checked back from Trump to Hoover. This country never learns.
The world is entering in a Peronist era. Take that Milei fans!
The sociopathic ideology of American/global gangster capitalism is in its death spiral. How long it will take to die, how violent things will become while doing so, and how much of the planet will be left relatively intact after its gone are the only questions remaining.
I’m a pretty smart guy but still have no idea what the assertion is here. Has nothing to do with the title. Still trying to understand the salient point.
No downward spiral in American history has been bigger than the 2008 economic recession…Um.
Thank you for this very simplified overview of our recent economic history. What concerns me going forward is the fact that supply chain issues with food production have not been adequately accounted for in the wake of ever worsening climate change. In addition, this backward thinking, clueless incoming administration will likely try to undo the policies that the Biden administration was working to implement through the USDA. For this reason I believe there needs to be a carbon tax levied on all corporations to insure the global climate can continue to sustain our food supply. I also suggest that everyone start planting food forests and gardens. Be well.
Everything I've read about the new car shortage is that it wasn't caused by a lack of manufacturing capacity and a spike in demand caused by people being flush with cash. Rather, it was caused by supply chain disruptions and auto makers anticipating lower demand. Specifically, they cut back semiconductor purchases and lost their slots to other consumers of fab capacity making it impossible for them to get the parts they needed. And while that situation has gotten better, it still isn't totally fixed.
What I’ve learned from this supply constraint economy was not to be cheap to your buyers/customers…I don’t think I want to buy another PlayStation again because of how cheaply made their controllers are in this generation.
The last comment about making better decisions is not realistic because people are trained to do one thing: cosume, buy, spend. Everything depends on people spending. Marketing and publicity and the social networks colonize people's minds into believing consuming is the only way to live life. People cannot make better decisions because that consciousness has been deprived from them.
This dude is clueless. Reality is different, not what media feeds us
Video takes about 8 minutes to come to the point
Exceptionally well done explanations with visuals that help to understand the dynamics at play.
I fear our society has not dealt properly with the rise of the monopoly of businesses! Until that happens the gaps between the rich and poor will only grow more stark!
When the word economy started being used, the activity and behavior for the innovation, production and exchange of goods and services was also included in the definition. The stories that people calling themselves economists started telling may have been a little bit more realistic than the stories about religions that people were telling but, the imagination of all these story tellers got the better of them and too much of their ideas where based on magical type thinking and they were not always honest with themselves or with others. The stories were always fascinating and we can always learn things from good stories regardless if they are true or not but there are limits to progress if the story tellers continue with the fabrications and the myths and magical thinking and are not able to transition into truth, reality, honesty, accuracy, reason, rationality, critical thinking and evidence based thinking.
Religions have master story tellers and to compete for power, status and wealth have literally convinced people that there are magical authorities that live in the sky. Economist can keep beating the same old drum and keep telling the same old stories as Adam Smith in the 1700’s with his book “The Wealth of nations” and Alfred Marshall in the 1800’s with his book “Principles of Economics” or they can start making the effort to tell some better stories on how to continue to exist on this planet in fair, peaceful and sustainable ways.
The idea and thinking that the economy always has to grow for there to be innovation, progress and prosperity may have worked well when communities and societies did not know the scale of the planet and their environment seemed unlimited. For quite some time now, we know that we live on a finite planet and the focus now needs to shift to sustainability not growth! Presently if the economy is not growing, it is considered a failure. This type of thinking cannot go on uninterrupted on a finite planet with finite resources. There needs to be flexibility in the system for the economy to expand and contract and for a contraction to be considered normal and not a problem or a failure. The contraction needs to be just as prosperous and productive as the expansion. For this type of thinking to work, there needs to be some new economic stories told based on economic sustainability not on economic growth.
I think capitalism is the best system with the best ideas but I also think some of the ideas of capitalism need to be amended with the primary focus and objective now being sustainability not growth. I also think the idea within capitalism that greed and selfishness is somehow a good thing and is rewarded needs to be forgotten. Greed and selfishness is not good in any economy and capitalism needs to correct this thinking. If this is eliminated from capitalism maybe we can’t call it capitalism anymore. We could be taking the good ideas from capitalism and the good ideas from socialism and calling this something else. Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden have had some success doing this.
A good starting point would be to begin with the understanding that the wellbeing and happiness of others benefits everyone and is the basis for morality. If people are struggling to survive, they will not care about anybody else or about the devastation of the planet. We now need some new economic ideas and models on how to build economies to be able to continue to innovate, produce and exchange goods and services to prosper and progress. We have to stop believing in nonsense and start to be much more truthful and honest with each other We need to learn how to compete for power, status and wealth without discriminating, abusing, conquering or killing each other and without the mistrust that causes nations to spy on each other and to manufacture weapons that can wipe out most of the life on this planet.
The way this can begin and at the same time improve peace, fairness, trust and morality is when the academics along with the economist, engineers, politicians, governments, corporations, capitalists and entrepreneurs can start learning how to be much more truthful and honest and start using their talents and resources to develop some new economic models that are based on sustainability instead of growth. I am sure there will be some noble prizes awarded to those who can succeed. The responsibility is with all of us but our wealthiest, smartest and brightest among us need to provide the leadership.
Here are some books that can help get us started: “Doughnut Economics” by Kate Raworth, “Prosperity without Growth” by Tim Jackson, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins and “Beyond Growth” by Herman Daly. Also, The Centre for Advancements of the Steady State Economy is an excellent resource.
this guy is pretty ghey sounding
I wonder how economic waves will shift now they early checking out billioners…?🤔
Ok, i lived through all this and you correctly summarized it, but what i really need from pundits and commentators is to follow the line of the rate of change that they are describing and then project out into the future to give me a sense of what is coming. That is the actual real value of this information and something that always gets cut short. History lessons don’t mean much if nobody ever gets better at projecting into the future.
You had to put a kid to try to make sense of this bs; “supply constrained economy”, “underinvestment”. Nice euphemisms. Plain and simple, you print money, that money buys less things. Where is that printed money going? To financial institutions that then sell it for a margin to the people, and that’s how they been screwing you.
You think we're still in supply constrained economy? What year was this video made? Couldn't be 2024.
Not sure this guy is old enough to even remember COVID.
Been drinking the kool-aid my friend,
The presented view overlooks the essential perspectives offered by a variety of divergent economic schools. In particular, Friedrich Hayek would provide a different explanation for economic events, contending that the Federal Reserve has acted against the interests of the middle class. He would argue that since 2007, the FED has contributed to a cycle of economic boom and bust, fueled by excessive government regulation. This interaction has led to significant inflationary pressures on the U.S. dollar, particularly affecting the prices of essential goods.
all this philosiphizing, the fact is doctors told everyone to stay home from our jobs and social lives for years and we were forced to get a vaccine, public trust was lost on a massive scale. Talk about that @
From an Australian's perspective which we're going through the same scenario, I think one point that is not highlighted is the fact of Chinese car companies absolutely booming within the past 5 years!
Not a single thing about how ALL the money ended up in the hands of the rich and how not taxing them means all of those subsidies given are hoarded by a precious few. Not a single thing about share prices and wages not booming like the economy, but only slowly going up.
Buddy – you ain’t one of us.
Could you elaborate further on the "cross pressure" that these businesses are going to feel, I dont think I fully grasped the idea.
Fantastic video
What is wrong about this commentary is that the holders of supply WANT to remain supply constrained. They aren't interested in a free market. We're in a late-stage capitalist moment where supply absolutely can scale up but suppliers don't want to. Premium-pricing boosts bottom line as stock values are more aligned with where you are on the profit per unit curve vs. maximized profit. If you are near the inflexion point on that curve, then you are assumed to offer a market opportunity and/or to have market power to take advantage of consumers or other producers. So your stock is premiumly priced. If you produce at full capacity and have slack in your system then you are maxed out and there is no ability to squeeze the market. You are merely a "player" not someone who can rig the market price.
This clear miss in the anslysis makes it nearly useless if you're trying to understand what really is going on here.
I wish everyone who voted in November understood the data in this video. Presidents don't solve inflation. The Fed does.
This is misleading. The amount of cars sold in the us improved between 2006 and 2018 rendering your example worthless. This is easily found from multiple reliable sources. You’ve rendered your entire channel worthless with your inability to fact check folks and playing loose and fast with correlation/causation. “Big Think, where we say whatever we’d like and hope you don’t research it!”
Pausing the video to comment, do you really think the US had very slow glow growth and employment problems from the span of 2008 2020?
Just goes to show the huge problem of manifesting the adage, when the only tool in your tool box is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So for government economic dimwits, every problem looks like a need to try to drown it in money. They are too stupid to understand the problem, too lazy to understand the problem, so rather than putting in the work to understand the problem and develop an actual reality based solution, they always just go to their stupid lazy "solution" of trying to drown the problem in money. Which of course never actually solves the original problem but just creates more problems. Generally speaking, every problem is some manifestation of imbalances in markets. The solution then is for markets to restore balances. Which of course no amount of drowning it in money is ever going to produce.
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