Dee Feat is in Dee Flation - part the forty fourth

It likely comes as no surprise that I've a chary view of all things psych- related. While the various professions in that class have found many insights, most have then been exploited by manipulators, to suit their purposes rather than the benefit of the population. My earliest memory of learning of this situation was reading "The Hidden Persuaders" from 1957.

... Packard explored advertisers' use of consumer motivational research and other psychological techniques, including depth psychology and subliminal tactics, to manipulate expectations and induce desire for products, particularly in the American postwar era.

Kind of mind blowing, although I didn't read it in 1957; likely about a decade later.

Another insight from the psych professions is a wonderful term/phrase cognitive dissonance, which I've usually boiled down to: "believing/asserting that which is clearly non-rational". Let's see what the wiki calls it...

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it.

Well, yeah.

So, why is this essay about things psych? Well... Within the econ cabal are two camps, nearly always warring: the Radical Right and the Lunatic Left. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out where I sit. Recent reporting brings these issues to the fore.

Along with, or subsumed by one of, these cabals are the Mad-as-a-Hatter Moneterists. They are of the Radical Right; money makes the world go round, even when we know that money is an artificial, human created, figment of the imagination. Gold, silver, jewels, and cowry shells have been 'stores of value' in various cultures for various periods of time. They have little utility.

The Moneterists mantra is that inflation is solely the result of too much moolah in the economy, and therefore the only cure is to 'take away the punch bowl'. As it happens, sometimes it is true that excess moolah has invaded the economy, and resulted in inflation. In my short lifetime, the most infamous devolved from LBJ's "guns and butter" speech and subsequent actions. Excess real demand exceeded available widgets.

Q. Mr. President, from what you have outlined as your program for now, it would seem that you feel that we can have guns and butter for the foreseeable future. Do you have any idea right now, though, that down the road a piece the American people may have to face the problem of guns or butter?

THE PRESIDENT. I have not the slightest doubt but whatever it is necessary to face, the American people will face. I think that all of us know that we are now in the 5 ad month of the prosperity that has been unequaled in this Nation, and I see no reason for declaring a national emergency and I rejected that course of action earlier today when I made my decision.

I cannot foresee what next year, or the following year, or the following year will hold. I only know that the Americans will do whatever is necessary. At the moment we enjoy the good fortune of having an unparalleled period of prosperity with us, and this Government is going to do all it can to see it continue.

Which then got us the Volker destruction. It took some time, abetted by Nixon of course.

So, how then is it possible that we have 'traditional' inflation at the same time as reporting tells us that consumer demand is falling? The answer, of course, is that this is not traditional inflation. It is curtailed supply, most evident in Vlad's work, moolah hoarding during the pandemic, and the failure of Xi's Covid policy.