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Last updated Nov 29, 2025
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Chamath @ 00:47:39Wrong
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Following Jerome Powell’s 2020 policy statement, the US Federal Reserve will keep short‑term interest rates at approximately 0% for at least the next five years (through roughly 2025), and possibly up to ten years (through roughly 2030), allowing inflation to run above its prior target before raising rates; as a result, there will be no significant near‑term inflation spike in the early 2020s that forces rapid rate hikes.
we are going to keep rates at zero for the next half decade, uh, basically, and at zero. Yeah. I mean, quite honestly, it's it could be a decade, but they're going to let inflation run before they basically match it with rates. There's no path to any near term inflation of any kind whatsoever.View on YouTube
Explanation

What was predicted

Chamath predicted that after Powell’s 2020 policy shift the Fed would:

  1. Keep short‑term interest rates at (roughly) 0% for at least five years (through ~2025), maybe up to a decade.
  2. Let inflation run above target before raising rates.
  3. Face “no path to any near‑term inflation of any kind whatsoever,” i.e., no significant early‑2020s inflation spike that would force rapid rate hikes.

What actually happened

  1. Rates did not stay near zero for five years.

    • The federal funds target range was held at 0–0.25% through 2020 and 2021 and into early 2022. (economicsummarizer.com)
    • Starting March 2022, the Fed began an aggressive tightening cycle, raising the target range repeatedly from 0.25–0.50% in March 2022 to 4.25–4.50% by December 2022, and then to 5.25–5.50% by July 2023. (forbes.com)
    • By late 2025 the policy rate is still around 4.0–4.25%, far from the near‑zero level he anticipated persisting for at least a half‑decade. (economicsummarizer.com)

  2. There was a large, early‑2020s inflation spike.

    • U.S. CPI inflation, which had been subdued in 2020, surged in 2021, reaching over 5% by mid‑2021 and above 7% by late 2021. (inflationdata.com)
    • Inflation then peaked at about 9.1% year‑over‑year in June 2022, the highest reading since the early 1980s. (cnbc.com)

  3. That spike clearly did force rapid rate hikes.

    • In response to the inflation surge, the Fed executed the fastest tightening cycle in decades, raising the federal funds rate by more than 5 percentage points between March 2022 and July 2023 specifically to bring inflation back down. (forbes.com)

  4. Partial credit: letting inflation run above target.

    • Powell’s 2020 framework did explicitly allow inflation to run moderately above 2% after periods of undershooting, and the Fed initially held rates at zero as inflation rose. (cnbc.com)
    • However, the prediction that this would coexist with no meaningful inflation problem and no need for rapid hikes proved wrong once inflation greatly overshot expectations.

Conclusion

Because (a) rates were lifted far above zero well before five years had passed and (b) there was a pronounced early‑2020s inflation spike that led to rapid, aggressive rate hikes, Chamath’s composite prediction is wrong.