If the administration pressures the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates, say, right before November 2026, then we lock in a stagflationary cycle. An initial stock rally then long-term bond yields rising on inflation fears. A weakening U.S. dollar, and a Federal Reserve that has no tools to fight inflation in the medium-term.
People love to bring up the gold chart and be like "what happened in the 1970s!". It wasn't ending the gold standard that was the problem. It was the endless deficit spending; if you want to get a handle on inflation you need current demand to match current production.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
The deficit spending is the reason why we had to leave the gold standard. France, for example, sent a battleship to NYC to retrieve their gold. The US government realized that they could not give out gold for all the dollars that they spent, and went into default on that obligation. The gold standard could have kept the government honest. But they were given too much slack and they abused it to the point of having to break promises officially.
The Fed cannot actually destroy all the money that they created. But they could start by not printing any more. They won't do that but they theoretically could.
Yes, interest rates?
The central bank raises interest rates, until there are enough bankrupcies and unemployment rate reaches a high enough level, The economy cools down.
The nation has low inflation again.
Rinse out and repeat.
They do the direct opposite of bailing anyone out.
Now the US is different. The Biden administration decided that the best way to fight inflation was to invent a giant pile og money and hand it out.
Which heats up the economy and should raise inflation .
Biden did not invent quantitative easing.
Can you provide some references for your claim? IIRC, under Biden, inflation was stoked by the Covid stimulus(arguably necessary to avoid rapid deflation due to Covid, but probably kept for too long) and the Fed moved pretty decisively in the second half of the Biden presidency to raise interest rates rapidly to combat inflation. FWIW, the inflation issue seemed to be under control and heading in the right direction before the administration changed.
Even Arizona Iced Tea had to come off their $0.99 price tag.
Everyone in America is hard-pressed to find anything for sale for at or under $1.00
Minimum wage is still federally $7.25.
How much worse does it actually have to get to be official stagflation?
In my low cost of living region you’d be hard-pressed to find any entry level positions (fast food, retail) below $15/hour. Panera (which needs staff at 4 or 5 AM to prep food for the day) are starting at $20/hour. Local restaurants and grocery stores can and do lose employees when a corporate chain raises their rates, so they have to keep up.
We could eliminate the federal minimum wage and very little would change.
Most things you described is inflation, not stagflation. The point about the minimum wage is a red herring because virtually nobody gets paid the federal minimum wage. Moreover contrary to many people believe, inflation has not been outpacing wage growth in the US:
If inflation (or some other shock) caused growth to head towards 0 with unemployment going above ~4% I believe economists would say it was a stagflation try period
Thousands of people are getting laid off every week, prices are higher than they have ever been for most goods and services, and while unemployment is low, the number of jobs available per person looking for work is less than the number of people looking for work, the government is shut down for now, and there are promises/threats of more jobs and positions being cut before it opens back up.
Really walking the razors edge here, lol.
And a Big Mac meal at McDonald's is $8.00.
They’re ready.
I used to be able to withdraw at least $500, now in a single transaction I can only withdraw $200 max. Given that inflation has gone so far the opposite direction, it's wild to me to see such low low maximum withdrawals.
Only time I pull out $20s is emergency money for gas station, since for whatever reason they won't take large bills.
Arizona Iced Tea price increases would be due to 50% aluminum tariffs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/business/arizon-iced-tea-... | https://archive.today/HOsps
> How much worse does it actually have to get to be official stagflation?
Steve Eisman: U.S. Consumers Are Collapsing: Cars, Credit, & the Chaos Ahead [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492807 - October 2025
* 69% of the US population are living paycheck to paycheck
* 25% of American consumers are using BNPL (buy now pay later) to pay for groceries
What breaks the camel's back? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, that is not out of any kind of financial necessity. It is a lifestyle choice.
Congress is also still free to override the Fed and make their own programs or change the operation of the Fed too.
Everyone keeps saying this, but then go and re-elect the same do nothings.
I wouldn't count on being able to trust whatever they do, or don't, report for the time being.
https://economicprinciples.org/
https://www.amazon.com/How-Countries-Go-Broke-Principles-ebo...
The oversimplified explanation is that there's a money cycle that lasts ~80-120 years. We're going through the rough part of the cycle right now; and trying to fight it just prolongs it.
We saw similar during the great depression, in that people couldn't find full time work, so they did gig jobs, quickly undercutting other laborers until wages cratered and it was a full blown depression. I suspect that gig work, even 1 hour/week is enough to get you out of the unemployed group, but it isn't sufficient and is masking the true labor market and unemployment. And then there is the Federal government firing the statisticians because the numbers coming out don't look good and now we can't trust the numbers. At this point any number you must assume to be majorly inflated from reality. Those made up numbers aren't even good.
What are you talking about? Unemployment numbers have been gamed for years. Those job cuts from years ago didn't reflect in unemployment because the stats are fake.
>We saw similar during the great depression, in that people couldn't find full time work, so they did gig jobs, quickly undercutting other laborers until wages cratered and it was a full blown depression.
That is the wrong way to look at it. The depression did not result from low wages. Low wages were downstream of other calamities in the economy back then, chiefly a credit bubble and stock market bubble bursting as well as drought conditions and crop failures. Remember the Dust Bowl?
When the economy is suffering, money is (and should be) in short supply. There were naive efforts from the US government to try to set wages high. They even tried destroying food to drive prices up, until the many hungry people in the country became outraged about it. In the end they decided to debase the currency, thus stealing from everyone who had anything under the pretense of solving a problem. They made the problems worse, and probably prolonged the economic misery by years.
It is trending up but is still lower than pretty much any time since the 2008 recession: https://unemploymentdata.com/current-u6-unemployment-rate/
Millennials have spent most of their careers systematically underemployed.
https://dol.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/03/overview-o...
I recommend "Applied Panel Data Analysis for Economic and Social Surveys" by Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Katrin Golsch, Alexander W. Schmidt, if you would like to learn more.
