<story><title>The Case for Higher Rates</title><url>https://thelastbearstanding.substack.com/p/the-case-for-higher-rates</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rsync</author><text>&amp;quot;What we desperately need today is higher rates, not merely as a temporary measure or to restore a sense of near term credibility, but higher for longer, in order to promote long-term economic vibrancy. In the near term, this will cause economic pain and wealth destruction.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There is an apt analogy to be made with forest fires and recessions.&lt;p&gt;You can keep forest fires from erupting for decades - and we have done that in much of the American West.  But the fuels continue to build up and, eventually, a fire that cannot be managed will explode violently - and cause much more damage than the aggregate of all of the smaller fires along the way.&lt;p&gt;Business firms fail.  Employees of those firms lose their jobs and suppliers are left unpaid.  Nobody likes this but it is the circle of life of the economy.  Keeping these firms alive with cheap and easy rollover of debt is akin to letting the fuels build up in the forest:  when the day finally arrives that these zombie firms cannot finance or rollover debt we will have an explosion of defaults and bankruptcies that consumes far more than the laggards we supported along the way.&lt;p&gt;We need regular recessions the same way we need regular fires in the forest.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Case for Higher Rates</title><url>https://thelastbearstanding.substack.com/p/the-case-for-higher-rates</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>paulpauper</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Per the Federal Reserve, total Household Net Worth before COVID-19 was $110 trillion. Two years later on 12&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;21, it clocked in at $150 trillion - a 36% increase - the largest increase ever over such a time period.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Isn’t it odd that during a period of economic turmoil, household wealth increased by the most on record? Indeed this strange dichotomy can be understood in large part by low rates and QE.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would explain the increase of household wealth pre-2008, before QE was even invented? The economy was in turmoil for a few months but then everything picked up again. GDP, corporate profits surged. Unemployment fell.&lt;p&gt;Home prices and stocks surged in the 80s and 90s despite high interest rates.&lt;p&gt;The fed raised rates from 0% in early 2016 to 2.5% by late 2018 and the stock market and economy did fine.&lt;p&gt;Correlation does not mean causation, as it&amp;#x27;s said. 0% interest rates forever didn&amp;#x27;t help japan until possibly only very recently. why is it suddenly different here.</text></comment>