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Originally Posted by bizaro86
It's strong but it isn't objectively wrong either.
1) he said interest rates would remain low
2) then he raised them
He has direct control over interest rates. I'm not saying he shouldn't have raised them, that was the right choice to fight inflation. But he shouldn't have said they'd remain low for years, because that caused people to make unnecessary economic mistakes. Basically making the economic pain worse for no gain.
I really hate it when powerful people hurt those weaker/less educated than themselves, which is absolutely what happened here.
He either knew or should have known that inflation was a likely outcome from worldwide massively expanding money supply and low interest rates, and that if it came through he'd have to go back on that and raise rates. I guess its also possible he's an idiot, but I think it's more likely he knew that wasn't true and said it anyway to further short term motives at the time.
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This is just hindsight bias. When he made those comments there were not all of the supply-chain issues we've seen over the past year. And frankly, it's hard to argue that the war in Ukraine hasn't caused a lot more of a spike in inflation than could've been expected.
But still...what would you have them do here? Just stick to the 0.25% and be able to tell everyone that they said they'd keep rates low, so they were doing that? It's preposterous.