What we’re reading (11/2)
“Fed Makes Another Big Rate Increase, Keeps Options Open For Next Moves” (New York Times). “Powell says the Fed would have expected goods inflation to come down by more than now, services prices are climbing swiftly, and overall the inflation picture has become more difficult this year, which makes it harder for the central bank to set the economy down gently.”
“Curbing Inflation Comes First, But We Can’t Stop There” (Larry Summers, Washington Post). “Those who believe the Fed is close to having done enough need to explain their view. If they believe that interest rates above 4 percent, in an economy with 7 percent core inflation, will cause a recession serious enough to reduce inflation below the Fed’s 2 percent target, they need to explain why. I find it absurd. Perhaps the argument is that preventing an overly deep recession is so important that it’s worth abandoning the Fed’s inflation target. But proponents of this view need to explain how, if inflation remains well above 2 percent, we can avoid continued erosion in real wages down the road.”
“Overemployed in Silicon Valley: How Scores Of Tech Workers are Secretly Juggling Multiple Jobs” (Vanity Fair). “On one Reddit community of 110,000, members share work hacks—like using ‘mouse jigglers,’ single-ear headsets, and a mantra (‘Always Be Interviewing’)—to help one another keep the ruse going. ‘All my paychecks are still coming in,’ one engineer claims, ‘but the fear of being found out is never-ending.’”
“U.S. Workers Have Gotten Way Less Productive. No One Is Sure Why.” (Washington Post). “Employers across the country are worried that workers are getting less done — and there’s evidence they’re right to be spooked. In the first half of 2022, productivity — the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour — plunged by the sharpest rate on record going back to 1947, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
“Who Pays For Your Rewards? Redistribution In The Credit Card Market” (Agarwal, et al.). “We use data on the near-universe of credit cards in the US to study redistribution between consumers in retail financial markets. Comparing cards with and without rewards, we find that, regardless of income, sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers…We estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated, poorer to richer, and high to low minority areas, widening existing spatial disparities.”
