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RE: CENTRAL BANKS prints money like THERE IS NO TOMORROW! Is there any other option other than to join that madness?

I used to be a Field Economist for the United States Department of Labor and I researched inflation which is the devaluation of money. The United States government controls the value of money in two ways.

The first is through monetary policy and that one is controlled by the Federal Reserve Bank.

The second is fiscal policy and that one is controlled by congress. The 900bn relief package that you are writing about is through congress and I expect there will be another one in excess of 1 trillion in a couple of months.

I separate monetary and fiscal because the net effect is slightly different. The Federal reserve monetary policy has led to inflation of investment assets. That is why stocks, bonds, gold, crypto, real estate, oil, and other commodities are all rising.

At the same time the job market in the United States has not recovered and the consumer price index is still low, so consumer inflation is low. Now enters fiscal policy.

The relief package (fiscal policy) can cause consumer prices to go up slightly as more of that money will go into the hands of people who will spend it through unemployment benefits. Some of it will be saved though. There is some data that suggest that some of this money will be saved and some of this stimulus will go towards more equity purchases.

In this case there will not be a large effect on inflation for consumer prices, but you will see some uptick in asset prices. This is just the demand side--spending.

On the supply side you do see commodity prices rising which implies that there will be an uptick of manufacturing. As long as you are creating goods faster than people are spending money then that would also limit inflation.

As for the effects of inflation on people. Inflation is the devaluation of money. If the Dollar or the Euro is lowing value then you are harmed if you hold Dollars or Euros. The more you hold the more it hurts. However, the opposite is true if you are poor and you are in debt.

If you hold no money or you are in debt inflation is helpful because you get to pay back your loans with money that is less valuable then when you borrowed it. Also, as a side effect the inflation that is driven by extra dollars being in the market also creates jobs. There is an inverse relationship between liquidity and unemployment in most of the data.

As for your question on what non US central banks should do? That is going to be dependent on the current state of each of those countries. The United States can print money almost indefinitely because it is currently the reserve currency of the world, but everybody else is limited in how much money they can print. I won't go too much further into this as my comment is already too long. If anybody wants to know more about this they can reach out to me.

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Thanks for this comment... I believe that printing money today does not raise inflation as much as it did 50 years ago.

Yes, the data in Europe and Japan seems to suggest deflation and that is why interest have stayed near zero for a long time and in some places are at negative interest rates. I am not saying that inflation is impossible, but the trends seems to be that the forces that create deflation are winning against the forces that create inflation.

I have not done research on this, but my intuition tells me that wealth inequality will be a big driver of deflation. The ultra wealthy aren't living paycheck to paycheck so a large percentage of the money that the wealthy receive go straight into investments. This drives the price up in the different asset classes, but it does not drive consumer inflation. At least we aren't seeing evidence of consumer inflation in any of the large economies yet.

Thanks for reply

 4 years ago 

Wow. Amazing feedback @therecantonlybe1

I trully appreciate your comment and your time you took to share your thoughts with me. Big THX.

I separate monetary and fiscal because the net effect is slightly different.

As "net effect" you mean ... way that new currency is being distributed?

If anybody wants to know more about this they can reach out to me.

I would like to reach out to you. Do you use Discord ? I would like to invite you to our community server: https://discord.gg/uWMJTaW

Hope to see you posting more often within our PH community :)

Stay safe buddy,
Yours, Piotr

"As "net effect" you mean ... way that new currency is being distributed?"

Correct, the distribution as to who gets the money and how the money is spent. Monetary policy is really a supply side solution while fiscal policy sometimes shows up as a demand side solution.
Biden will push for an infrastructure and climate change bill sometime around March and this bill will probably be branded as another "stimulus package". I suspect a lot more of this money will go directly to local, state, and government agencies rather than the private sector for this particular package. When that money goes to the local, state, and government agencies then that money will be spent for sure.

In monetary policy, the money supply expansion tends to put banks and investors in control of the money and if banks are afraid to lend then there is little to no liquidity effect. You saw this in 2008.

The other issue is that the Fed and the private banks tend to drive asset prices up. Most of the money gets "invested" in stocks, bonds, and bitcoins. That is different than money being "spent" on every day things like construction, food, and rent.

The Fed has been putting a lot of pressure on congress to pass fiscal stimulus because they know that monetary stimulus only has a limited effect on the economy. Its very top down. While fiscal if done correctly, could be a little more bottom up or "decentralized". It really depends on exactly what the fiscal package looks like.

Biden has picked Janet Yellen to be the new Secretary of Treasury. Janet Yellen was the former Fed president, so now you will have two Fed people. Powell leading the Fed, and Janet leading the treasury. I suspect more fiscal and less monetary in the future.

We will see how things turn out.

 4 years ago 

Wow. Thank you for taking the time to reply @therecantonlybe1

Amazing comment.

ps. I'm not sure if I ever invited you to our Project.hope community discord? Consider joining: https://discord.gg/uWMJTaW

Cheers, Piotr