Research Finds Link Between Inflation and Laughter In Federal Reserve Meetings

schliz writes "A one percentage point increase in an inflation forecast brings about a 75% rise in laughter, according to an American University PhD student, who studied transcripts of the Federal Open Market Committee at the Federal Reserve. Laughter usually comes in response to witticisms during a meeting at the time of the inflation forecast, and has been shown to be a mechanism for coping with the stress of a perceived threat."

Comments

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those with their boots on the necks of general public usually think their power over the masses is funny.

They're not laughing with us, they're laughing at us. It helps cover the sounds of the rest of us gasping for air.

Re:So?

[cascadingstylesheet]

The powerful don't want to see inflation, it makes their money worth less.,

Inflation makes everybody's money worth less. I visited Brazil during hyperinflation. It wasn't just the "powerful" suffering.

BTW, "the powerful" did fine in the US during the 1970s .../p?

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that cost of living has continued to increase, though you wouldn't know that looking at the official numbers because the government rules out everything that gets more expensive as "too volatile" to include in the index, so the government's official cost of living numbers excludes everything that gets more expensive.

Re:So?

[tmosley]

Good inflation is when you print money and spend it first. Bad inflation is when other people print money and devalue the dollars in your pocket.

Re:So?

[tmosley]

That is incorrect. Inflation is great for those who get to print it. The Fed and thus the banks are the ones that get first access to that money, and get to charge interest on it, interest that can mathematically be paid from no source except default. Default destroys resources. This monetary system thus forces destruction of resources through malinvestment.

Money is not wealth. Money is a CLAIM on wealth, which is composed of real things. Printing money does not create more wealth--it just dilutes it, and redistributes it to those who get first access to the printed money.

Alternate Title

[Rob the Bold]

I propose an alternate title to this story:

"An open invitation for cranky Slashdotters to complain about waste of taxpayer money -- despite it being non-governmental funded -- to study a topic I find ridiculous."

Re:Wish I could laugh

[Trepidity]

Nobody else gets to vote themselves a raise, create their own health plan, retirement, etc.

Um, that's pretty much how C-level executives work at large companies. They are nominally under the control of the board, who is nominally the elected representatives of the shareholders, but like with our elected political representatives, in practice they have quite a bit of unrestrained control over things like voting each other raises and approving golden-parachute contracts (formally on behalf of the shareholders who voted the board in, of course).

Haha hahaha ha...

[MrKaos]

hahahah ahaha haha hahahahaha hahahah ahahaha...

Re:It hurts the powerful less than the weakest

[Dunbal]

Your tax bracket is suddenly 30% instead of 20%... oh wait, what? People always forget this amazing benefit (for the government) of inflation.

Keynesian Cognitive Dissonance

[bill_mcgonigle]

The Keynesian School (along with some Monetarists), which controls The Fed, claims to not believe that printing money ("quantitative easing") can in, in fact, create price inflation (they contend it should get the economy roaring and the opposite should happen). Now Keynes himself didn't believe this, but his disciples think he was mistaken on that particular count.

Meanwhile, the Austrian School economists contend that the money creation is itself the monetary inflation (by definition...) and that price inflation is just an inevitable consequence of monetary inflation (more dollars in the pool means each dollar has less value).

The trouble is, the Austrians take that consequence to say that it means that ultimately the central banks are harmful to the economy, since they're constantly interfering in the transfer of information across the economy by interfering with pricing and interest signals. If you're a central banker, the idea that central bankers are harmful can't be true, so if anything happens that indicates the the Austrians might be right after all, it's going to be a a bit unsettling.