by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
The Fed and its minions are about to get what they so richly deserve: the full blame for the coming catastrophe.
The key justification for the Federal Reserve’s zero-interest rate policy is that inflation is transitory. Sorry, Fed, inflation is already embedded, i.e. inflation is now a self-reinforcing feedback loop: price leaps trigger wage increase demands, supply constraint expectations are now built into wholesale cost increases, and all these increases in wholesale, retail and wage costs drive each other higher as participants now understands that higher wholesale costs drive higher retail prices which feed higher wages which feed higher costs.
The conventional consensus holds that globalization and technology are deflationary. But globalization is no longer deflationary as fragile supply chains logjam and break and prices on the margin soar as demand skyrockets due to hoarding and attempts to restock depleted inventories.