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The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

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101–110 of 319 posts

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#101

Is anyone (who is paid/lives in the US) concerned about the future value of USD? A lot of my friends are saying I should be investing in cryptocurrencies for future safety, but I don't see those as very stable, so I'm hesitant to put my savings into it.

Investing in crypto is always nuts, but especially if you are trying to reduce risk. Don't listen to your friends. Buy index funds, with more into bonds if you really want less risk. You won't ever beat the market on average as a retail trader.

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#102
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who continue to jumble up inflation by its consumer defenition with the huge expanding of the amount of us dollars are only shooting their own wealth and anyone who listens to them's wealth in the foot. All you have to look at is stocks and home real estate to see that assets are ballooning no matter how cheap a dozen of eggs stays.

Right, I've posted this before, but long term wealth building is becoming too expensive for the average person. The only reason food hasn't become too expensive is wealthy people don't have a reason to go out and buy up all the food. They do, on the other hand, have reason to go out and invest. This is, however, starting to fall apart for goods that don't normally have reason to be bought up. In other words, folks wi…

If they can hoard goods and sell them all at higher prices, then does that imply that the goods are priced too low to begin with? What's keeping the sellers from recognizing this and raising the prices themselves?

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#103
post #73
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the things you enumerated are included in the fed's calculation of CPI. Are you arguing their weightings are bad?

FED changed the weightings in 1980, notably if I remember correctly they greatly reduced the importance of housing prices (not what they call "housing" category, but the price of the shelter itself) There was some article coming out some days ago about how when using old CPI calculations inflation is actually 10%, and wages are lagging extremely behind inflation when using old CPI.

Are there "unofficial" weightings available so that inflation could be analyzed under a different set of assumptions?

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#104
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, that is flat out incorrect. They are printing asset and liability money this time around. Observe: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 The is (give or take money market funds) the total sum of money in US bank accounts. Compare and contrast with 2008 for example, where the asset money creation was restricted to the asset side because it was used to take dodgy loans out of the banking system and put them…

Bank reserves are counted in M2, but US Treasuries and other highly liquid assets aren't. The fact that these are functionally the same to a bank is ignored (or deliberately obscured). I mean, this is just common sense: if M1 or M2 expansion were printing money, then a rapid doubling of M2 should cause CPI inflation. But it doesn't.

I think you're sort of trying to have it both ways here. The Fed has been printing money for 12 years in hopes of increasing CPI. But real people, who buy the stuff in the CPI basket, don't have M2, so no CPI bump. It took a long time for central banks to realize this. And even astute minds like John Paulson got tripped up on this one. Starting in 2009, he bought as much gold as he could because he feared rampant CPI inflation (which never came).

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#105

Is anyone (who is paid/lives in the US) concerned about the future value of USD? A lot of my friends are saying I should be investing in cryptocurrencies for future safety, but I don't see those as very stable, so I'm hesitant to put my savings into it.

I am, and have been dedicating about 20% of each paycheck directly into Bitcoin.

This really isn't a rational thing to do as an individual. You aren't going to beat more sophisticated players.

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who continue to jumble up inflation by its consumer defenition with the huge expanding of the amount of us dollars are only shooting their own wealth and anyone who listens to them's wealth in the foot. All you have to look at is stocks and home real estate to see that assets are ballooning no matter how cheap a dozen of eggs stays.

Consumer inflation actually is inflation, by definition. This isn't being confused, this is understanding how inflation is defined and using terms correctly. Inflation is about the prices people actually pay, on average. Your neighbor's house getting sold for a lot of money isn't a real cost to you like rent. Someone paid that price, but they are not necessarily typical. Inflation does include rent (or "imputed rent"…

This is the new definition, in old dictionaries inflation was defined as increase in money supply.

Using products to measure inflation, is a terrible mistake in my estimation, because cost has been falling, so stable prices don't mean no inflation.

It just means the governments got wise to just take what they can get without being noticed.

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#107

The Fed is only creating bank reserves, which does not create more money. Therefore, the Fed has not been printing money. When the Fed buys assets (government bonds, Fannies, etc.) from a bank, the bank gets back 'bank reserves', which are just a number in the bank's Federal Reserve account somewhere. Those reserves can't be lent out. The bank can make no change to its lending, because it's a one-to-one swap (highly…

Functionally there's little to no difference between what you've described and what is colloquially known as "money printing". You've essentially just redefined "money" to include U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, and then stated that it's just an asset swap and not money printing. You can use whatever terminology you want, but at the end of the day, the Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air…

No, FED does not print money - bank reserves are not legal tender. If they had printed money, inflation would have skyrocket.

My only question is why banks agree to this deal: exchanging U.S. treasuries for bank reserves (which they only can use as a collateral for lending) ?

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the dollars have not been permanently pumped into the economy, and the world has faith that the Fed will shrink its balance sheet. Printing money and lending it out, and then burning the money when it's repaid, is very different than printing money and using it to buy goods and services.

That's a best case scenario and feels overly optimistic. What are the chances it gets fully repaid?

Assuming society continues onward, it doesn't really need to be fully repaid. The value is in the organization and structure of society. However, war, environmental catastrophes, population decline, and loss of trust between citizens of a nation can cause a decrease in the predictability of actions and consequences in society, and that would be a problem for any debt issued with rosier assumptions.

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#109

The Fed is only creating bank reserves, which does not create more money. Therefore, the Fed has not been printing money. When the Fed buys assets (government bonds, Fannies, etc.) from a bank, the bank gets back 'bank reserves', which are just a number in the bank's Federal Reserve account somewhere. Those reserves can't be lent out. The bank can make no change to its lending, because it's a one-to-one swap (highly…

Creating bank reserves absolutely creates money. Bank reserves are the fulcrum around which bank leverage ratios operate. Yes, they can margin treasuries to borrow reserves from other banks, and in that sense, they are fungible. But the total amount of bank reserves in the system at any one time is still what bounds the total amount of money creation that can happen via leverage. Increasing the absolute amount of bank reserves increases the money supply, by a factor roughly equal to the current reserve requirement ratio (up to demand for credit, etc, etc.).

Re: The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.

#110
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's r/bitcoin which is arguably even worse.

I've never been to the subreddit, but then followed the link and regrettably read a few comments.

The signal/noise ratio on that subreddit was unusablely low start at least ~2017. /r/btc is marginally better, but most of the popular cryptocurrency subreddits are very low quality.
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