I keep coming back to this post and rereading it every few weeks, trying to make sense of it. I have long deeply appreciated Matt Yglesias because he’s a policy wonk who cares about data and multidisciplinary expertise, wherever they lead. As such, he has tended not to be an ideological purist. Instead, he has advocated whatever it seems would produce more just results. His series of pieces a few years ago basically making a centrist case for Bernie Sanders was masterful, urging people (correctly) to look past rhetoric and ideology and towards the very non-scary and common sense policies being proposed. I loathe overblown ideology and ridiculous rhetoric, and when people support the right candidates for the wrong reasons. I have also appreciated ways in which Matt has continually tried to point out to Americans that the successes of euro-style social democracy lie in an approach to redistribution that resembles what tracks as “lefty” in the US but also includes aspects of the technocratic bureaucracy that American left-populists despise.
Being non-ideological and a fan of some “lefty” policy without believing in leftist ideology or societal analysis, I really hate reducing everything to class or wealth or greed. I don’t think those totalizing analyses are generally helpful.
But recently, Matt’s analysis and policy prescriptions have taken such a (fiscally) regressive turn that I am forced to suspect that the reason is simply that since transitioning to being an independent journalist on substack, his income and wealth have ballooned significantly and thus his interests and outlook have shifted accordingly. He will not have to turn down his thermostat no matter what. He will not have to decide not to buy certain nice things that are non-essential and downgrade his dignity (by forgoing symphony tickets or nice foods or whatever) in order to afford essentials. It is easy for him to advocate austerity as long as we don’t let anybody literally starve or freeze. If his income were such that the difference between Warren-style policy and neoliberal policy literally made the difference between whether he had to replace his fridge with a cheap Kenmore or a nice, reliable KitchenAid, he would not be openly advocating austerity. He would be telling the truth, which is that while greed is a constant and companies didn’t suddenly get more greedy in 2021, they do have a unique set of excuses to sanitize and misdirect and obfuscate. The totalizing leftist analysis of absolutely everything that way borders on conspiratorial. But gouging of non-essential and essential goods is real. Matt’s analysis is shockingly wrong, and I think he must know it. Warren and Sanders and their supporters may be shrill and counterproductive and unhelpful at times, but the boring European social democracy we rightly idolize came about because after WWII, everyone knew the populists were basically right in their analysis of what was wrong with inequality and why, but they brought technocrats on board to turn that analysis into sensible policy.
What was magically different, in Matt’s mind, about 2008-2012 (when he was an orthodox Obama centrist) that would have made Warren-style moderately populist social democracy better and safer to try, and deficits safer to balloon, but now that the country is actually more ready for it, it’s suddenly the wrong moment? If we don’t find a way to thread the needle and address the valid concerns buried in the populist noise, we will get either the left or the right flavor of totalitarian populism. People are done tolerating austerity preached by those who could redo their kitchen with the latest sub-zero fridge every two weeks without sacrificing any other aspect of their lifestyle, while we have to deny ourselves life-giving art and recreation for decades just to afford a slight kitchen upgrade. There is no way around that. We should not enact bad policy just to pretend that shrill fantasies actually reflect sound analysis. But we are still a wealthy superpower with bad spending priorities. We can find the capital to make things more just. We can be technocratic social democrats instead of technocratic neoliberals, and I think the only reason Matt is no longer screaming that from the hilltops is because he has migrated from Kitchen-Aid territory to sub-zero territory.
Blaming inflation on corporate greed is like blaming heat waves on the sun. Not that there isn’t corporate greed, but it’s there all the time and therefor can’t be blamed for events.
"At the end of the day, though, only a very stupid person would think companies suddenly became greedy in 2021 after years of being non-greedy."
I agree, but this seems like a big strawman? What people are actually saying is that companies suddenly had good excuses to be greedy. This might be wrong, but it does not seem like a very stupid thing to think.
I think the most charitable reading of this would be that
1) Companies want to maximize their profit.
2) Under previous circumstances, demand was weak enough that increasing prices caused a loss in sales.
3) In the current situation, demand is so high that you can raise prices and still not run out of customers looking to buy.
4) So in fact, companies can raise prices and still sell all their product which will maximize their profit.
Now the fed is raising interest rates, which will dampen demand and reinstate the previous equilibrium. However, our real goal should be to increase supply to meet the heightened levels of demand at more competitive prices.
On the one hand, I think you're entirely correct about how "greed" is so much BS as well as your general criticisms of populist right and left economic "policy."
On the other hand, I think you need some pushback regarding the "deficits don't matter" attitude and the need for more government stimulus during most of the 21st century.
On the first, deficits indeed don't matter in the short term. But all that debt from 2008-2012 and every other year this century is growing and growing faster than GDP. And now that inflation is here and high interest rates are around the corner, the payments to service that debt are going to balloon. The whole "deficits don't matter" construct is entirely dependent on interest rates remaining near zero and the assumption that sometime in the future GDP growth will grow away the debt.
Secondly, I think it's important to examine exactly why more stimulus was needed - not just during 2008-2012, but for most of the last two decades. In 2009 deficit spending was almost 10% of GDP - more than any point in the last 100 year except for WW2, and deficit spending this century is historically high - almost 3% of GDP more on average than GDP growth.
In short, I think there is something wrong with an economy that requires consistent government deficit spending that is significantly higher than GDP growth. Moreover, such a situation is mathematically unsustainable.
The baby formula shortage has little to do with issues at one plant or the normal function of markets. It’s a government-created problem.
The USDA’s Women Infants and Children (WIC) program effectively buys more than half of the baby formula in America by distributing coupons that people can use to purchase the formula. To control its costs, WIC creates state-by-state monopolies for its coupons. That leads retailers in each state to only stock the formula brands WIC coupons can purchase.
When the state’s monopoly supplier has an issue at one of its plants, the other suppliers don’t have an immediate path to supplying retailers. And those retailers can’t accept WIC coupons even when alternative supply shows up in their stores.
This WIC program needs a redesign. The problem has been well-understood for years.
The description of the supply chain for tables exists only in an Econ101 textbook.
The reason you give sellers the cost of inputs defense is that you can then follow the cost issue up the chain.
This makes sense because most supply chains have links in them that are characterized by a dominant firm and a number of smaller firms. The dominant firm collects most of the profits in normal times because they are most efficient but have no meaningful pricing power because of the smaller firms.
From time to time, the dominant firm is able to become the monopoly firm by blocking the smaller firms from receiving inputs. Industry suppliers rightly choose to provide goods to the dominant firm first, meaning nothing is left for the smaller firms. Periods of widespread shipping issues, like we’ve been in for the past 18 months or so, are a great example of this. The dominant firm becomes the monopoly firm and can sell at the monopoly price, which is generally higher.
You’re seeing this all over economy right now.
The Warren bill (imperfectly) attempts to get at this problem on a permanent basis. Her messaging about the bill and the inflation we’re seeing is silly and populist. But the bill is not.
The manufactured housing industry is a great example.
Berkshire Hathaway has been the dominant firm through its Clayton Homes subsidiary since the mid-2000s. But there is also a constellation of smaller firms.
For the last year and a half, the smaller firms have gone from the normal four month delivery windows at fixed prices to being able to guarantee neither delivery nor price. If you place an order with any of them today, they’ll tell you to expect delivery in two years and can’t provide a fixed price.
Meanwhile, Berkshire’s Clayton (under various brand names) has the increased prices substantially and absorbed all the supply of standardized parts for manufactured housing. Berkshire continues to deliver homes while the smaller firms are largely stuck sitting on their hands.
I do a substantial amount of single-family development using manufactured homes and used to buy from various companies including Berkshire’s Clayton. Now I can only buy from Clayton.
To an outsider, it likely looks like I’m selling for much higher prices and must be earning huge profits. The reality is that I’m selling for much higher prices and Berkshire is earning monopoly profits.
How is Berkshire able to "increased prices substantially and absorbed all the supply of standardized parts for manufactured housing?" One would think that a competitor would raise prices slightly and then outbid Berkshire for the standardized parts?
For the past 15 years Clayton (Berkshire) has been the largest customer for most of the manufactured housing industry’s prime suppliers. So when any given supplier has limited stock, it sells what it has to its biggest customer.
This effectively prevents non-Clayton manufacturers from bringing homes to market at any price. As a result, Clayton is able to charge the monopoly price.
"Then to fix things, you’d need a real government rationing system — so much bacon per week, so many eggs, etc. And then you’d have illicit trade in ration coupons, a black market, the whole deal."
Having been a child in the People's Republic of Poland, I can confirm that this is true.
I agree with most of this post, but I think there is -potentially- an element of opportunistic greed here.
When we (people who work at companies that make stuff) price our goods, we consider the prevailing prices of all of the other companies around us. This is a coordination problem - we can't call up the other companies and go "hey, if we all raise our prices, we'll all make more money" because (1) we'll go to jail and (2) the other company might not cooperate and steal our customers while still making a profit, gaining market share.
So if there were some exogenous shock that raised prices in a LOT of places all at once (e.g. a big change in consumption patterns when there wasn't slack production supply), perhaps that could act as a sort of a "Schelling Point" allowing companies to opportunistically raise prices?
I picked up the Monday-special bagels today - they've gone from $7 to $8. They were at $7 for a very long time and clearly were not reflecting commodity prices. They now sit at $8 and don't reflect commodity prices. This is an example of a price set to achieve a marketing goal where the flexibility to change the price comes from consumer expectations and all of the other businesses.
I think my theory is that a non-zero amount of price increases are in this category, but I don't have a quantitative sense of what percent that is. I'd consider products where the per-unit cost is low and the up-front costs are high and therefore keeping a small margin compared to marginal inputs isn't the main concern of the business, particularly where IP is involved.
So I would have bought "greedflation is rare" and some empirics, not "greedflation is fake".
I don’t have a constructive response here but will leap at the excuse to link to Tim Robinson’s wonderful sketch about the perils of working in the tables business. https://youtu.be/-ZBwPmla8QQ
The fact that so many adults believe in the "greedflation" theory seems like a problem with our public education system. Everything Matt described in this post was covered in my high school economics class.
I dunno. Maybe we can get the 3-D printer crowd to start pounding out baby formula. Two things have pained me for a long time. One is that people do not know what anything is made of. The other is that they don't know how anything is made. I don't particular care what that thing is btw.
But I will tell you this for nothing. No one builds vast idle production plants. That is a recipe for bankruptcy. Production for anything is aligned with anticipated demand.. And yes there is some slack, as you note, but not much.
This was true for the N95 masks that I have used my whole working career as required. It is true for electricity in Texas where consumer rates are generally low because they don't carry the cost of supporting excess capacity. And they deliberately isolate their grid to prevent 'foreign sources' from dumping power into their grid. That would make internal generators unprofitable. Think of it as a physical tariff.
Which brings me to baby formula. Now I see a lot of people suggesting as a solution that the importation of baby formula from Europe be allowed or increased. So here's my question: what makes anyone think the Europeans or anyone else for that matter have the excess capacity in their supply chains and manufacturing base to do this without creating their own shortages, panic buying and empty shelves. No one has that. They have some production slack but that is all. And it isn't much for the same reason you don't.
You are right. The key solution is to bring the Abbott plant back on line. But here we run into an almost uniquely American desire to have manufacturing capacity and eat it too, in the form of punitive lawsuits. This almost happened in the case of N95 masks where the leading high quality producer, 3M, was successfully sued for 30 million dollars by exactly two coal miners. Their claim was that defective masks caused them to develop black lung. There's a lot of coal miners out there and workers in other industries whose lawsuits will doubtless proceed now.
So what happens if the Abbott plant goes online and even a suspicion arises that their product results in the injury or death of an infant? Keep in mind that it was closed on the possibility that two children were injured and two died as a result as a result of some sort of contamination. What regulatory agency is going to permit further production without some seriously fussy technocracy?
The advantage of global markets is that the same percentage is larger. For example - let's say that the US has a baby formula market of 100 million units a year, while the global market is 1 billion units a year. A production slack of 3% in the US market would only cover a 3% gap, but if we could get the global production slack of 3% directed to the US, it could cover a gap up to 1/3 the US annual need. Nothing in real life is as easy or clean as that example, but the underlying idea is still true.
One concrete benefit I could see from a windfall profits tax is it would encourage businesses to reinvest money into more supply. It'd be a shame if it were all channeled to stock buybacks.
I keep coming back to this post and rereading it every few weeks, trying to make sense of it. I have long deeply appreciated Matt Yglesias because he’s a policy wonk who cares about data and multidisciplinary expertise, wherever they lead. As such, he has tended not to be an ideological purist. Instead, he has advocated whatever it seems would produce more just results. His series of pieces a few years ago basically making a centrist case for Bernie Sanders was masterful, urging people (correctly) to look past rhetoric and ideology and towards the very non-scary and common sense policies being proposed. I loathe overblown ideology and ridiculous rhetoric, and when people support the right candidates for the wrong reasons. I have also appreciated ways in which Matt has continually tried to point out to Americans that the successes of euro-style social democracy lie in an approach to redistribution that resembles what tracks as “lefty” in the US but also includes aspects of the technocratic bureaucracy that American left-populists despise.
Being non-ideological and a fan of some “lefty” policy without believing in leftist ideology or societal analysis, I really hate reducing everything to class or wealth or greed. I don’t think those totalizing analyses are generally helpful.
But recently, Matt’s analysis and policy prescriptions have taken such a (fiscally) regressive turn that I am forced to suspect that the reason is simply that since transitioning to being an independent journalist on substack, his income and wealth have ballooned significantly and thus his interests and outlook have shifted accordingly. He will not have to turn down his thermostat no matter what. He will not have to decide not to buy certain nice things that are non-essential and downgrade his dignity (by forgoing symphony tickets or nice foods or whatever) in order to afford essentials. It is easy for him to advocate austerity as long as we don’t let anybody literally starve or freeze. If his income were such that the difference between Warren-style policy and neoliberal policy literally made the difference between whether he had to replace his fridge with a cheap Kenmore or a nice, reliable KitchenAid, he would not be openly advocating austerity. He would be telling the truth, which is that while greed is a constant and companies didn’t suddenly get more greedy in 2021, they do have a unique set of excuses to sanitize and misdirect and obfuscate. The totalizing leftist analysis of absolutely everything that way borders on conspiratorial. But gouging of non-essential and essential goods is real. Matt’s analysis is shockingly wrong, and I think he must know it. Warren and Sanders and their supporters may be shrill and counterproductive and unhelpful at times, but the boring European social democracy we rightly idolize came about because after WWII, everyone knew the populists were basically right in their analysis of what was wrong with inequality and why, but they brought technocrats on board to turn that analysis into sensible policy.
What was magically different, in Matt’s mind, about 2008-2012 (when he was an orthodox Obama centrist) that would have made Warren-style moderately populist social democracy better and safer to try, and deficits safer to balloon, but now that the country is actually more ready for it, it’s suddenly the wrong moment? If we don’t find a way to thread the needle and address the valid concerns buried in the populist noise, we will get either the left or the right flavor of totalitarian populism. People are done tolerating austerity preached by those who could redo their kitchen with the latest sub-zero fridge every two weeks without sacrificing any other aspect of their lifestyle, while we have to deny ourselves life-giving art and recreation for decades just to afford a slight kitchen upgrade. There is no way around that. We should not enact bad policy just to pretend that shrill fantasies actually reflect sound analysis. But we are still a wealthy superpower with bad spending priorities. We can find the capital to make things more just. We can be technocratic social democrats instead of technocratic neoliberals, and I think the only reason Matt is no longer screaming that from the hilltops is because he has migrated from Kitchen-Aid territory to sub-zero territory.
"America needs fussy technocracy, not new rounds of populism."
Spoken like a true neoliberal shill.
Blaming inflation on corporate greed is like blaming heat waves on the sun. Not that there isn’t corporate greed, but it’s there all the time and therefor can’t be blamed for events.
The cure for high prices is high prices. They stimulate production and curtail demand.
Likewise the cure for low prices is low prices they encourage producers to lease the market while stimulating demand.
Trade is good on an even footing. It's not good if they steal your technology or leaves your supply chain vulnerable to a potential military rival
"At the end of the day, though, only a very stupid person would think companies suddenly became greedy in 2021 after years of being non-greedy."
I agree, but this seems like a big strawman? What people are actually saying is that companies suddenly had good excuses to be greedy. This might be wrong, but it does not seem like a very stupid thing to think.
I think the most charitable reading of this would be that
1) Companies want to maximize their profit.
2) Under previous circumstances, demand was weak enough that increasing prices caused a loss in sales.
3) In the current situation, demand is so high that you can raise prices and still not run out of customers looking to buy.
4) So in fact, companies can raise prices and still sell all their product which will maximize their profit.
Now the fed is raising interest rates, which will dampen demand and reinstate the previous equilibrium. However, our real goal should be to increase supply to meet the heightened levels of demand at more competitive prices.
On the one hand, I think you're entirely correct about how "greed" is so much BS as well as your general criticisms of populist right and left economic "policy."
On the other hand, I think you need some pushback regarding the "deficits don't matter" attitude and the need for more government stimulus during most of the 21st century.
On the first, deficits indeed don't matter in the short term. But all that debt from 2008-2012 and every other year this century is growing and growing faster than GDP. And now that inflation is here and high interest rates are around the corner, the payments to service that debt are going to balloon. The whole "deficits don't matter" construct is entirely dependent on interest rates remaining near zero and the assumption that sometime in the future GDP growth will grow away the debt.
Secondly, I think it's important to examine exactly why more stimulus was needed - not just during 2008-2012, but for most of the last two decades. In 2009 deficit spending was almost 10% of GDP - more than any point in the last 100 year except for WW2, and deficit spending this century is historically high - almost 3% of GDP more on average than GDP growth.
In short, I think there is something wrong with an economy that requires consistent government deficit spending that is significantly higher than GDP growth. Moreover, such a situation is mathematically unsustainable.
The baby formula shortage has little to do with issues at one plant or the normal function of markets. It’s a government-created problem.
The USDA’s Women Infants and Children (WIC) program effectively buys more than half of the baby formula in America by distributing coupons that people can use to purchase the formula. To control its costs, WIC creates state-by-state monopolies for its coupons. That leads retailers in each state to only stock the formula brands WIC coupons can purchase.
When the state’s monopoly supplier has an issue at one of its plants, the other suppliers don’t have an immediate path to supplying retailers. And those retailers can’t accept WIC coupons even when alternative supply shows up in their stores.
This WIC program needs a redesign. The problem has been well-understood for years.
The description of the supply chain for tables exists only in an Econ101 textbook.
The reason you give sellers the cost of inputs defense is that you can then follow the cost issue up the chain.
This makes sense because most supply chains have links in them that are characterized by a dominant firm and a number of smaller firms. The dominant firm collects most of the profits in normal times because they are most efficient but have no meaningful pricing power because of the smaller firms.
From time to time, the dominant firm is able to become the monopoly firm by blocking the smaller firms from receiving inputs. Industry suppliers rightly choose to provide goods to the dominant firm first, meaning nothing is left for the smaller firms. Periods of widespread shipping issues, like we’ve been in for the past 18 months or so, are a great example of this. The dominant firm becomes the monopoly firm and can sell at the monopoly price, which is generally higher.
You’re seeing this all over economy right now.
The Warren bill (imperfectly) attempts to get at this problem on a permanent basis. Her messaging about the bill and the inflation we’re seeing is silly and populist. But the bill is not.
This is an interesting description. Can you share a specific example or two that is currently occurring?
The manufactured housing industry is a great example.
Berkshire Hathaway has been the dominant firm through its Clayton Homes subsidiary since the mid-2000s. But there is also a constellation of smaller firms.
For the last year and a half, the smaller firms have gone from the normal four month delivery windows at fixed prices to being able to guarantee neither delivery nor price. If you place an order with any of them today, they’ll tell you to expect delivery in two years and can’t provide a fixed price.
Meanwhile, Berkshire’s Clayton (under various brand names) has the increased prices substantially and absorbed all the supply of standardized parts for manufactured housing. Berkshire continues to deliver homes while the smaller firms are largely stuck sitting on their hands.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDNSAUS
I do a substantial amount of single-family development using manufactured homes and used to buy from various companies including Berkshire’s Clayton. Now I can only buy from Clayton.
To an outsider, it likely looks like I’m selling for much higher prices and must be earning huge profits. The reality is that I’m selling for much higher prices and Berkshire is earning monopoly profits.
How is Berkshire able to "increased prices substantially and absorbed all the supply of standardized parts for manufactured housing?" One would think that a competitor would raise prices slightly and then outbid Berkshire for the standardized parts?
For the past 15 years Clayton (Berkshire) has been the largest customer for most of the manufactured housing industry’s prime suppliers. So when any given supplier has limited stock, it sells what it has to its biggest customer.
This effectively prevents non-Clayton manufacturers from bringing homes to market at any price. As a result, Clayton is able to charge the monopoly price.
"Then to fix things, you’d need a real government rationing system — so much bacon per week, so many eggs, etc. And then you’d have illicit trade in ration coupons, a black market, the whole deal."
Having been a child in the People's Republic of Poland, I can confirm that this is true.
The level of imports in manufactured goods. Was never close to that high except for maybe very early in the Republic.
I agree with most of this post, but I think there is -potentially- an element of opportunistic greed here.
When we (people who work at companies that make stuff) price our goods, we consider the prevailing prices of all of the other companies around us. This is a coordination problem - we can't call up the other companies and go "hey, if we all raise our prices, we'll all make more money" because (1) we'll go to jail and (2) the other company might not cooperate and steal our customers while still making a profit, gaining market share.
So if there were some exogenous shock that raised prices in a LOT of places all at once (e.g. a big change in consumption patterns when there wasn't slack production supply), perhaps that could act as a sort of a "Schelling Point" allowing companies to opportunistically raise prices?
I picked up the Monday-special bagels today - they've gone from $7 to $8. They were at $7 for a very long time and clearly were not reflecting commodity prices. They now sit at $8 and don't reflect commodity prices. This is an example of a price set to achieve a marketing goal where the flexibility to change the price comes from consumer expectations and all of the other businesses.
I think my theory is that a non-zero amount of price increases are in this category, but I don't have a quantitative sense of what percent that is. I'd consider products where the per-unit cost is low and the up-front costs are high and therefore keeping a small margin compared to marginal inputs isn't the main concern of the business, particularly where IP is involved.
So I would have bought "greedflation is rare" and some empirics, not "greedflation is fake".
I don’t have a constructive response here but will leap at the excuse to link to Tim Robinson’s wonderful sketch about the perils of working in the tables business. https://youtu.be/-ZBwPmla8QQ
The fact that so many adults believe in the "greedflation" theory seems like a problem with our public education system. Everything Matt described in this post was covered in my high school economics class.
I dunno. Maybe we can get the 3-D printer crowd to start pounding out baby formula. Two things have pained me for a long time. One is that people do not know what anything is made of. The other is that they don't know how anything is made. I don't particular care what that thing is btw.
But I will tell you this for nothing. No one builds vast idle production plants. That is a recipe for bankruptcy. Production for anything is aligned with anticipated demand.. And yes there is some slack, as you note, but not much.
This was true for the N95 masks that I have used my whole working career as required. It is true for electricity in Texas where consumer rates are generally low because they don't carry the cost of supporting excess capacity. And they deliberately isolate their grid to prevent 'foreign sources' from dumping power into their grid. That would make internal generators unprofitable. Think of it as a physical tariff.
Which brings me to baby formula. Now I see a lot of people suggesting as a solution that the importation of baby formula from Europe be allowed or increased. So here's my question: what makes anyone think the Europeans or anyone else for that matter have the excess capacity in their supply chains and manufacturing base to do this without creating their own shortages, panic buying and empty shelves. No one has that. They have some production slack but that is all. And it isn't much for the same reason you don't.
You are right. The key solution is to bring the Abbott plant back on line. But here we run into an almost uniquely American desire to have manufacturing capacity and eat it too, in the form of punitive lawsuits. This almost happened in the case of N95 masks where the leading high quality producer, 3M, was successfully sued for 30 million dollars by exactly two coal miners. Their claim was that defective masks caused them to develop black lung. There's a lot of coal miners out there and workers in other industries whose lawsuits will doubtless proceed now.
So what happens if the Abbott plant goes online and even a suspicion arises that their product results in the injury or death of an infant? Keep in mind that it was closed on the possibility that two children were injured and two died as a result as a result of some sort of contamination. What regulatory agency is going to permit further production without some seriously fussy technocracy?
The advantage of global markets is that the same percentage is larger. For example - let's say that the US has a baby formula market of 100 million units a year, while the global market is 1 billion units a year. A production slack of 3% in the US market would only cover a 3% gap, but if we could get the global production slack of 3% directed to the US, it could cover a gap up to 1/3 the US annual need. Nothing in real life is as easy or clean as that example, but the underlying idea is still true.
One concrete benefit I could see from a windfall profits tax is it would encourage businesses to reinvest money into more supply. It'd be a shame if it were all channeled to stock buybacks.
There seems to have been a decline in economists input in the public discourse. Biden needs to tap whatever arm puts Jason Furman in the game.