Episode Details

Your $10,000 in savings today buys what $6,400 did in 2000. That's a 36% loss of purchasing power — and central bankers call it healthy. Why? This episode unpacks the three layers of the inflation debate: the wage-price spiral that makes prices sticky upward, the zero lower bound that gives central banks their buffer against deflation, and the hidden wealth transfer from cash holders to asset owners. We trace the 2% target back to its origins in 1990s New Zealand, examine Japan's deflationary lost decade, and ask whether zero inflation is even a stable equilibrium — or a knife's edge with catastrophe on one side. For the saver who followed the rules and got burned, this is the explanation the textbooks leave out.