Jamie Dimon says we might get to 6%

Crash

...He got that from ME. I had the scoop before uncle Jamie. Is this really news, after all? Perhaps.
Anyway, inflation's not going away. Unless there's another Great Depression. I learned in history class that unemployment was into the 30s percent and a full meal could be had at a restaurant for a quarter in those days. (Remember 19 cent burgers?)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgans-dimon-says-u-interest-012212631.html

Mark

"(Remember 19 cent burgers?)" Of course. We used to get White Castle's for 8 cents and endless coffee for 5 cents a cup.

LewisBraham

Why is it people always remember the lower prices from the past, the music and young love, but so rarely the horrors? Wally and the Beave weren’t the 1950s reality for many if not most people who lived back then. I doubt it was even the reality for the actors playing Wally and the Beave. Yet half the nation wants to go back. Nor is this meant to pick on you. I have bouts of nostalgia too.

hank

Nice take L.B.

Used to buy those White Castles when visiting relatives in and around Detroit in the 60s. Remember 20 cents. I was making $1.25 an hour than at a summer job at a gas station. No benefits of course. The 3-speed stick-shift cars we drove to White Castle were clunky gas guzzlers. (20 mpg was nearly unheard of). No power steering, power brakes or turn signals. Reach out and adjust the side mirror by hand if lucky enough to have one - most cars didn’t. Might even have to hop out and change a flat tire ourselves on the way home - as “flats” were common in those days. After getting home we’d watch something on a small black & white TV - whatever the 3 or 4 available networks decided to air. No remote control of course.. Would need to get up to adjust the “vertical” or “horizontal” settings every few minutes as the picture would always go out of kilter. But the burgers tasted damn good.

msf

We each have different memories. Vehicles w/o mirrors are before my time:

The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 addressed safety standards, including rear visibility, and although it did not specifically require [rear or side] mirrors, they started to become standard equipment in the mid-to-late '1960s.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a39613608/side-view-mirror-evolution/

Now manual steering is something else. While it could take a lot of effort to steer, remember that cars were much lighter then and the engines weren't sitting over the front axle. My old MR2 had the easiest, most responsive steering of any car I've owned - with a curb weight of 2100 lbs, mid engine (M) rear wheel (R) drive, (2) seater (MR2) - pure joy. But also decades later.

Some TVs in the 60s, even the 50s did have wireless remote controls, but they were very limited in both capacity and availability. They were sold with some Zenith sets. The one I knew about was the "Space Command" (ultrasonic) in the 60s. Though earlier, in the 50s, Zenith had an optical remote control, the Flashmatic "ray gun". Just because you couldn't afford a remote control that cost 1/6 the price of a car (without mirrors or power steering) doesn't mean it didn't exist
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180830-the-history-of-the-television-remote-contro

Without a remote control, this is how one adjusted a TV (Ernie Kovacs video 1½ min)
https://content.jwplatform.com/previews/tQ5Knynv

hank

OK - Ya got me on those cheesy little driver side mirrors. Hard to adjust - but there were some in the 60s. But the passenger side (right side) were late in coming and of course, even then, it was hard to reach over and adjust them when driving.

”Even until the late 1980s, new cars didn’t come pre-installed with passenger side-view mirrors. “ Source

Let’s remember that the kind of people who frequented White Castle (and devoured 20-cent burgers) weren’t the wealthiest on the block. Quite likely in the 60s they were driving something built in the 50s or earlier.

@msf - your experience with non-power steering is different from mine. The ‘57 and ‘62 Chevies I owned were a bit of a struggle to steer. But one got used to it and didn’t really notice. It’s amazing the things we got used to in those days.

Mark

Still miss the front door vent windows from long ago. And I also remember a McDonald's burger+fries+shake for 48 cents. Always a treat as a kid.

Sven

Just wonder if the Fed would act on inflation, say 6 months earlier?

At the height of the pandemic, Powell cut rate from to 0.25% while increase monthly buying of treasury bonds and later mortgage bonds. Rate hike started in March 2021 by 25 bps when they realized they were way behind to control their 2% inflation target. 6% rate suggested by Dimon would bring this economy into deep recession.

Junkster

LewisBraham said:

Why is it people always remember the lower prices from the past, the music and young love, but so rarely the horrors? Wally and the Beave weren’t the 1950s reality for many if not most people who lived back then. I doubt it was even the reality for the actors playing Wally and the Beave. Yet half the nation wants to go back. Nor is this meant to pick on you. I have bouts of nostalgia too.

You are as wrong as wrong can be here. I believe it is called while privilege now and I am suppose to feel guilty. But with just about everyone, and I mean *everyone* I grew up with in the 50s it was indeed exactly like Wally and Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. That was the reality. It was the best of times. No horrors whatsoever. Things began changing in the 60s with Kennedy’s assassination, the British Invasion, the Vietnam War, and drugs. But what do I know, I am just some ancient relic from the past. But fortunately still enjoying life to the fullest due in part from that idyllic childhood and upbringing of the 50s.

Edit: Just thought about one horror of the 50s which fortunately didn’t impact me - pedophilic priests.

WhollyTerriers

Remember when you could buy a car with no radio?
We just had a blank space in the dash. My father didn't see the point.

larryB

@ Junkster. The Detroit suburb I grew up in the fifties was on the surface just like Wally and the beave. But one didn’t have to travel very far to see that the larger society was not like my own happy corner of the world. By the time I was entering high school it was pretty obvious that my happy suburban paradise was not like the rest of the world.

LewisBraham

@Junkster I'm sorry to tell you that the gold old days of the 1950s weren't so good for people who didn't look like you. Half the population, women, faced limited job, salary and education prospects because of discrimination while many in the remaining half did too if they looked, felt or believed differently from the mainstream. A number of happy couples I know today wouldn't even be allowed to walk down the street.

AndyJ

Junkster said:

You are as wrong as wrong can be here. I believe it is called while privilege now and I am suppose to feel guilty.

I grew up like that and don't feel even a trace of guilt, wouldn't expect anyone else to either, and don't think the overall message to us is to feel guilty. I didn't create the system we lived under then, and neither did you. Neither of us are victims here.

And I'm glad we're actually making a few strides toward "a more perfect Union," even if a part of the population doesn't like it.

LewisBraham

Guilt is unnecessary and solves nothing, but acknowledgement at least of the lack of a perfect union back then and now would help. Without that acknowledgement, people can continue to pretend that nothing needs to be done to address problems which persist even today and instead claim they want a DeLorean to travel back to "the good old days."

sma3

The 1950s were not good times to have cancer, or be exposed to polio, measles or mumps as there were only just beginning to have vaccines, or to get heart disease. Bacterial disease was on the run as Penicillin was widely available along with other antibiotics

Cancer chemotherapy was only beginning to be effective in the 1960s, but as late as the 80's my cousin died in six weeks from colon cancer that very likely would be halted today. I can't remember the last time I saw someone die from the first or even second heart attack, if they got to the hospital in time. Happened all the time before angioplasty.

LewisBraham

Regarding Wally:

https://baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-08-01-1993213175-story.html

https://cbsnews.com/news/tony-dow-on-life-beyond-leave-it-to-beaver/

Crash

OMG, and 19 cent gas. ..... Next-door neighbors were best friends. Everyone actually KNEW everybody....
...And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming....
6%. Well, I remember the inflation of the '70s and '80s. But I had no money invested anywhere. These days, I'm paying attention. 6% might actually result in good rates for savers--- although things have already improved on that score. The economy? BELCH.

larryB

@ Junkster. I would also take exception to your characterization that “everyone” had life like the Nelsons and the Cleavers. In 1982 I was in the very isolated fishing village of Bahia Tortuga on the west coast of Mexico. Quite by accident I met a woman from my suburban paradise. I gushed about what a great place it was to grow up back in the day and she went nuts. She let loose with a flood of bitterness and bad memories that she had been carrying with her for decades. And I bet she wasn’t the only one.

Junkster

larryB said:

@ Junkster. I would also take exception to your characterization that “everyone” had life like the Nelsons and the Cleavers. In 1982 I was in the very isolated fishing village of Bahia Tortuga on the west coast of Mexico. Quite by accident I met a woman from my suburban paradise. I gushed about what a great place it was to grow up back in the day and she went nuts. She let loose with a flood of bitterness and bad memories that she had been carrying with her for decades. And I bet she wasn’t the only one.

I expected to catch flak for what I said and deservedly so. I was most blessed in the 50s with an idyllic and Norman Rockwell childhood. I was in the right place at the right time in the right community with the right parents. Luck of the draw I suppose. I realize that may not have been the case for others. Some of my friends who were also blessed by being children of the 50s grew into adulthood with an assortment of problems, some drug related, others suffering a multitude of failed marriages/relationships. Unfortunately, many are now 6 feet under. The victims of the ravages of advancing age. That may have been the cause of my outburst seeing yet another old friend pass yesterday.

Crash

Sorry to hear about that @Junkster. It was a simpler time. In western New England, Jim Crow was a thing that never entered our minds. I remember the picture we took of my fabulous new red bicycle. And the station wagons, one after another. And phones with circular dial. Everything these days is so crowded and noisy and complicated. Nothing is straightforward anymore. The criminal suck-wads have seen to that, since they have literally infected every aspect of our daily lives, with malware and viruses and ransomware and all the rest of it. There's no respite. (sigh.) You can't get anything done without first proving you're NOT a criminal. Crap.

hank

Oh hell .. feel free to burst out anytime. We’re all friends here (despite occasional nit-picking).

Sorry to hear of friend’s passing.

I’m afraid most of us live in different “realities.” I traded a conservative small town upbringing for a career in a more liberal and affluent suburban area near Detroit. In retrospect, neither reflected “reality” - although I’d say life in the suburbs came a lot closer.

PRESSmUP

Many of those “Leave it to Beaver” families were funded by union negotiations…I know mine was.

Crash

PRESSmUP said:

Many of those “Leave it to Beaver” families were funded by union negotiations…I know mine was.

Amen. My father was a cop, instrumental in getting the police union started up. Things improved after that.

AndyJ

Delete.

msf

. In western New England, Jim Crow was a thing that never entered our minds.
That was the problem.

Powerful maps: Groundbreaking report exposes ‘redlining’ in Pittsfield’s past that kept Black citizens in poverty cycle
'Jim Crow in everything but name'
By Heather Bellow, The Berkshire Eagle April 16, 2022

In 1956, the situation had only worsened.
...
It wasn’t Jim Crow laws that helped lock a poverty cycle in place — those were illegal in Massachusetts.

It was a [redlining] map of Pittsfield.
...
The HOLC, as it is known, made color-coded maps that divided neighborhoods in U.S. cities by creditworthiness and risk for lenders.

It coded the “hazardous” neighborhoods in red, subjecting those residents to a lack of investment that would continue to plague future generations and segregate a city to this day.

The authors of a groundbreaking report, “Redlining in Pittsfield: A case study,” lay all of this out, focusing on the West Side neighborhood, and revealing that the Berkshires, like the rest of the Northeast, had its own way of keeping people of color down.

“We didn’t have Jim Crow laws but we had Jim Crow in everything but name,” said Kamaar Taliaferro, an NAACP Berkshire County Branch officer and community leader specializing in housing, and one of the report’s leading authors.
...
“Many folks don’t think of Berkshire County as a Detroit or a Chicago,” [co-author Frances Jones-Sneed, Prof. Emeritus, Mass. College of Liberal Arts] said of what the report calls a “false distance.”

Crash

+1.
Mass. College of Liberal Arts used to be known as the North Adams State Teachers' College, before everything shifted and got fancified and dandied-up. Special names for lovely wonderful institutions. Because we are ALL special and wonderful and glorious and super-dooper and fabulous. How DARE you tell me I have AVERAGE ability????

"How come, in former lifetimes, everybody's somebody famous?"
-----Crash Davis.


Yes indeed, there was red-lining. And we never heard it referred to. It was a dirty little secret. Now there's no more redlining, and the crime is ALL OVER the city. What have we fixed?

davidrmoran

Yeah.

I grew up in a Leave It to Beaver family (not really) and city in SW Ohio starting 76y ago, middle-class if not upper-middle-class, but thank goodness had liberally educated, progressive, allocentric parents who knew what freedom is for and what our obligations are to others.

They pushed hard for and helped get enacted fair housing legislation, among other local initiatives (religiously though not color-integrating the country club, bringing the MJQ to the local symphony, active in LWV, Planned Parenthood, all that sort of thing).

Many of my friends' families were not like that, though lots were (through church and local university).

Now, in a true black comedy piece of history, I find out that where we moved to, on the north side, in the early 1950s had begun its life (long before my parents arrived) as a restricted redlining model for the entire bleeding country.

https://www.pbs.org/video/redlining-harry-kissel-ozarwf/

FDR's admin adopted of Harry Kissell's recommendations. Oi!

Off-topic,
@msf
>> remember that cars were much lighter then and the engines weren't sitting over the front axle.

Not clear what cars are being thought of here, but every Chevy (and all the rest) I drove from the 1950s and 1960s had exactly that distribution:

https://conceptbunny.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/1957-Chevrolet-Bel-Air.gif

msf

The site comes up as potentially compromised in my security software.

No matter. I mispoke. What I was thinking of was front wheel drive.

Rear wheel drive cars have better balance than front wheel drive cars. Because the balance is better, the handling of the car will be better. Front wheel drive cars have most of the weight of the engine and transaxle over the front wheels. On the other hand, rear wheel drive cars distribute the weight of its drivetrain more evenly from front to rear.

https://www.bmwofbridgewater.com/blog/2018/december/13/front-wheel-drive-vs-rear-wheel-drive.htm

Crash

+1.
I remember big, heavy, clunky DeSotos, smaller Studebakers, Nash Rambler, Hudson, along with Ford, Plymouth, Dodge, Chevy, Olds, Cadillac. Lincoln. Mercury. Edsel. Seems to me, the sheet metal was thicker, heavier. You could "pound out" a small dent. And I recall the old line: "You could get any color you wanted, as long as it was black." Just a bit before my time.

hank

msf said:

What I was thinking of was front wheel drive.

Had me wondering too. Thought maybe you were referencing something like the VW Beetle of the 60s which had its (air cooled) engine in the rear.

Correct on RWD having better balance and handling characteristics. FWDs tend to get better traction in snow due to the weight over the drive wheels. But, as I once learned first-hand, once you “break traction” and enter a skid at higher speeds with a FWD they become absurdly difficult to control compared to RWD (no picnic either). One thing to avoid is installing “winter” tires on just the front to save expense. That can cause the fronts to grip better than the rears during an icy skid and make it near impossible to pull out of it. Great sketch from David. Sure resembles the classic ‘57 Chevy, prettiest car I ever owned.

linter

Junkster said:

i was raised in the 50s in a fabulously wealthy (white) family. grandfather was an assistant secretary of defense in the eisenhower administration, then administrator of GSA. my parents divorced when i was 2, with my richy rich glamorous mother sent to reno for a quicky split, where she met a ranch hand at a dude ranch set up specifically for women like her, married that ranch hand, then left me with him while she returned to DC. let me tell you that the horrors visited upon me during that stay were only equaled by those waiting for me upon my return to potomac river shores. decades later, i heard from friends of that time that while my upbringing was exceptional, theirs was not writ from any ozzie and harriet script. and so, i believe, it has always been -- exceptions to the rule or, more likely, every day events, all depending on the compounding of bad luck, rotten timing, and upended circumstances.