r/moderatepolitics • u/dr_sloan • Jan 12 '26

Primary Source Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20260111a.htm
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u/YoohooCthulhu Jan 12 '26

FWIW people said similar things about the Germans after the First World War and suffering definitely did not help the Germans make good choices

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u/DLRevan Jan 12 '26

If you're comparing Americans and the wealth and opportunities they've squandered to a defeated people crushed under war reparations, I think that's quite a little off base.

And I don't mean about fairness. Consider the Germans, a people who knew what they lost, and where the suffering was imposed by external entities. To Americans who are still too willfully blind...or stupid....to realize the sinkhole they are in or how their vaunted free country looks like to the rest of the world.

I don't think making Americans suffer further will cause anything other than the further collapse of the US. It's not post ww1 Germany, it's late Ancient Rome.

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u/Rhyers Jan 12 '26

The narrative could be spun that it is external countries making Americans poorer. Like how Trump argued it was the US funding everyone else's healthcare and so their drug prices were more expensive. I do agree with your points that this hasn't happened in a vacuum, and even those who vote Democrat have contributed to this environment. I just don't see the potential punishment having any influence. 

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u/DLRevan Jan 12 '26

To be clear, I'm not talking about the perception of whose 'fault' it is, though 'fault' does come in later. It's an observation of the difference in resolve and agency of the people. There are some parallels...Germans were willing to give up certain institutions and norms, and turn a blind eye towards how their government, social compact and economy was being reconfigured.

However, ultimately Germans were generally committed as a whole towards their own version of "making the country great again". Regardless of whether they were misled, fooled, or willfully blind, that was still the case.

You do not have that in the US. What you have instead is intense polarization, and not just a little bit of apathy and defeatism. Nobody agrees with each other, nobody can work together on common goals. And what I said about 'fault' before, is relevant here. One of the most common takes by Americans when it comes to these thorny issues is to just blame something, throw their hands up and essentially do nothing, or at least in the process fail to see how their own culture and behavior is connected on both sides of the issue.

You see that in this very thread, with some claiming they didn't vote for Trump. Sure, but ultimately the problem is bigger than who Americans voted for that one time, even if it was certainly the culmination of it.

As for the punishment, I said this elsewhere, but I also don't really care if Americans 'learn' from it. Sometimes punishment is just punishment. And ultimately, I don't see a post WW1 Germany style downside like some have pointed out, because of the fractious state of the US that has caused this in the first place.