I think there are other forces at work, but I have to admit that a ton of what's happening right now looks like the hangover from a large scale economic distortion.
ZIRP was also, along with under-building, a major force in pumping housing prices up to insane levels. All that free money had to go somewhere so it went into asset bubbles (real estate, precious metals, crypto), stock bubbles, and hypergrowth business plans fueled by "dumping" on the market at or under cost (the "Millennial lifestyle subsidy").
I've had this speculation (reminder: speculation) that a major motive for a chunk of tech backing Trump is to try to use him to bring back ZIRP, because there's a chunk of the industry that can't work without it. A large portion of the industry is optimized to attract ZIRP-fueled investment and channel that money into buying hypergrowth, and that doesn't work without nearly free money.
BTW -- China has done something similar in manufacturing, printing money to subsidize manufacturing to dump on the global market to become the "workshop of the world." IMHO they actually have more to show for it. We have slop and enshittification (inflation after the subsidy runs out), while they have real industry. We subsidized the wrong things with ZIRP.
ZIRP was also, along with under-building, a major force in pumping housing prices up to insane levels. All that free money had to go somewhere so it went into asset bubbles (real estate, precious metals, crypto), stock bubbles, and hypergrowth business plans fueled by "dumping" on the market at or under cost (the "Millennial lifestyle subsidy").
I've had this speculation (reminder: speculation) that a major motive for a chunk of tech backing Trump is to try to use him to bring back ZIRP, because there's a chunk of the industry that can't work without it. A large portion of the industry is optimized to attract ZIRP-fueled investment and channel that money into buying hypergrowth, and that doesn't work without nearly free money.
BTW -- China has done something similar in manufacturing, printing money to subsidize manufacturing to dump on the global market to become the "workshop of the world." IMHO they actually have more to show for it. We have slop and enshittification (inflation after the subsidy runs out), while they have real industry. We subsidized the wrong things with ZIRP.
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