If this inflation is the price of liberty for Ukrainians and the price of independence from a dictator for Western Europe, then I am willing to pay that, personally.

I just don't think Ukraine explains that much beyond natural gas prices going up, as far as I'm aware, and even that I suspect is limited to Europe. (I am in the US).

I agree with you that it would be worth it, but it's also definitely not what caused inflation.

Historical timeline of USA central bank rates and world events:

March 3, 2020 -50 basis points

March 14-15, 2020 -100 basis points

Feb 19 2022 Zelensky speech puts in question 1994 nuclear disarmament agreement

Feb 20 2022 VP Harris in Munich encourages Ukraine entry into NATO, "So I respect President Zelensky’s desire to be a member of NATO."

Feb 24 2022 Russia in to Ukraine.

March 15-16, 2022 rate increases begin

Zelensky nuclear ambitions speech translated: https://kyivindependent.com/zelenskys-full-speech-at-munich-...

Harris talking about Ukraine joining NATO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

Something can happen in the world and not be the causation for the other. It's totally possible.

It is possible. What other event caused Federal Reserve to suddenly raise rates in March 2022?

(somewhat) interesting question, it might be worth discussing sometime

anyways, do you have any evidence for the causality you suggested here? so far it hasn't been very convincing

keep in mind, as you make your case, that most posters here are smart enough to not fall for a "post hoc ergo proper hoc" fallacy

Federal Reserve is a private contractor to USA and sets the price of money (interest rates). Their recent statement timidly implied the war is causing inflationary pressures. As a contractor, they can't directly tell the White House to 'knock off the warmaking' so they wrote 'international developments'.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcminu...

Page 9: "Members also agreed that their assessments will take into account a wide range of information, including readings on labor market conditions, inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and financial and international developments."

If you like to read books, this book about Russia has amazing references including FOIA documents. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-plot-to-seize-russia-ma...

you're saying you think that quote means russia's war on Ukraine is causing inflation?

if so, it doesn't – not only does it not even mention russia's war on Ukraine, it doesn't even mention a rate increase, much less a correlation between the two

not only THAT, but you conveniently ignored all the 4 other factors they listed first

and before you go down the conspiracy theory route of "X can't/won't say the REAL truth but I'll tell you what it is", a lack of evidence for a theory isn't evidence of the theory, and while I'm sure you're a great person, your word in this situation is unconvincing

Trump both railed against the low rates at the end of the Obama presidency and then railed against raising them when he took office. The idea that it was a sudden event that caused rate hikes is only seen by someone not paying attention to it for a decade.

Lok at the big rate cuts in 2020 because virus. Out of nowhere seemingly, actually a few weeks after Ukraine fighting started, the Fed hiked rates. The Fed knows war is inflationary and jumped into rate hiking.

People have been talking about the need for higher interest rates for a decade. 2020 happened and they dropped them, again. That caused the people saying we needed higher rates to continue to say we need higher rates. The fact they were so low for so long is the anomaly.

By the time the war in Ukraine began, people had been arguing for months that the Fed was waiting too long to increase rates, that inflation expectations were becoming unmoored, that the Fed's conclusion that inflation was "transitory" was incorrect.

Here's Larry Summers from November 2021[0]. Note that his argument there is that the "transitory" inflation argument had already been shown to be incorrect, because by three months prior to the beginning of the war in Ukraine, inflation had already been progressing for months, along with the will-they-or-won't-they debate over rate increases.

Here is a Fed statement from April 2021[1], which I think is the first one that uses the word "transitory".

Point being that no, the rate hikes that happened a few weeks after the war started in absolutely no way came "out of nowhere seemingly". Everyone had been talking about it for a year.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/15/inflation...

1: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone...

Do you remember that thing that happened where people started getting sick from a novel disease and then most people were told they needed to stay home for a few months and not consume any services and then that caused a huge number of people to be laid off and then that caused the government to inject a huge amount of fiscal stimulus to recover from all of that and then suppliers underestimated the pace of demand recovery and underinvested in supply and logistics to meet that demand and then that resulted in a bunch of ripple effects in supply chains? No? You missed all that?

When evaluating inflation levels the Fed as a matter of policy uses a price level measure that doesn't directly account for food and energy costs.

> Zelensky nuclear ambitions speech translated: https://kyivindependent.com/zelenskys-full-speech-at-munich-...

I must be missing something because I cannot see a single part in there that says Ukraine wants to acquire nuclear weapons.

All it says is that Ukraine willing gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees (from the US, France and Russia) and that those countries are not really abiding by the agreement.

If you could quote part of the speech that mentions Ukraine wanting nuclear weapons that would be great.

unfortunately, no matter how much we want the conflict to end, it won't without the commitment of russia to end it, which means withdrawing their Ukrainian-toddler-raping troops* from Ukraine and ending their attempted 3rd russian genocide of Ukrainians**

* - per a UN investigation

** - with the Holodomor and the deportation of the Crimean Tatars being at least 2 previous russian genocides of Ukrainians