He labelled the cause as government policy, which clearly includes pandemic measures.
Sweden didn't lock down but they did print a ton of money. Compare money supply growth for UK vs Sweden. It's the same and occurred at the same time. Lockdowns weren't the only pandemic spending measures unfortunately. All governments everywhere massively pumped the money supply to pay for "whatever it takes" and now the bill has come due:
> Do you really think none of this matters, or do your political leanings tell you it's always the government's fault?
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, however, this basic insight is easy to get confused about because there's a large gap between theory and practice when it comes to this metric.
In theory inflation cannot occur without money printing, because a rise in prices of something like oil or food must be compensated by a fall in prices elsewhere as demand for that less essential thing disappears. People re-allocate their financial decisions towards the thing increasing in prices, businesses compensate by lowering prices to try and increase demand, it balances out.
Several things complicate this simple picture in practice.
One is that government inflation metrics don't include all prices. Indeed they cannot because it's too difficult to collect that data and prices constantly change. Also, governments like to play games with inflation statistics because if you can confuse people about inflation you get to pay for election pledges with money printing and then blame inflation on external factors, and because people tend to vote for whoever promises to spend more without raising taxes it's a quick way to hack democracy. So they usually define inflation only in terms of a small subset of all prices. If you do that then you can obviously have inflation even in the absence of money printing because you're ignoring the prices that fall.
Another problem is that in a sufficiently damaging period of price instability, some goods and services may simply cease being available. Everyone is spending all their money on heating their homes and other businesses go bankrupt as a consequence. At this point the price of the thing effectively goes to infinity, it just can't be obtained at any price, but that ruins the calculations and so governments do substitutions within the basket of prices, asserting that X is a substitute for Y even if in reality X is quite different (e.g. different kinds of meat). There are lots of hacks like these in how the stats are calculated.
Yet another problem is that money printing is somewhat circular in a fractional reserve system with very low reserve ratios and there are lots of feedback loops. If the government prints lots of money, then gives it to people whilst simultaneously banning the spending of it then it will appear they printed lots of money without causing inflation. When they stop banning the spending of it, that will show up as inflation even if the money printing has stopped. This is what's happening now, as governments shovelled money into people's pockets during lockdowns but there was nothing open to spend it on.
Nonetheless, we usually think of inflation has being caused by money printing because most of the time prices aren't being affected by wars or oil cartels and when that does occur, the prices which rise are being compensated by other prices that are falling or disappearing (which is a loss of wealth). It may just not be obvious.
> In theory inflation cannot occur without money printing, because a rise in prices of something like oil or food must be compensated by a fall in prices elsewhere as demand for that less essential thing disappears.
This is silly, inflation existed before "money printing" existed as a concept. We had inflation when we had gold standard. Inflation existed even when we used physical gold coins to pay.
More plainly, the most important factor in the economy is velocity of money and you completely ignore that it exists. Higher velocity of money can allow inflation to rise, with a fixed supply.
1. Debasement of the currency (reducing the gold content of coins)
2. Gold mining
3. Stealing gold from abroad
That's why the Spanish Empire suffered hyperinflation after Cortez, because so much gold was brought back to Spain from the conquered South American tribes.
Yes, money velocity has an impact too but the main thing which can affect that is government intervention (like by printing lots of money and giving it to people who then save it - low velocity - and later start spending it - higher velocity).
Agreed, it is silly to say inflation "only" occurs due to money printing. I'd like to point out though that gold is printed. More precisely it is mined.
If governments sell bonds to domestic buyers then indeed that doesn't create money, but in practice most bonds are bought by the central bank using printed money.
What do the funds used to buy bonds do until repaid?
They back the newly printed currency.
You see, nothing is ever actually created.
Money is created from Commodities like wheat, corn, and metals, all of which are obtained in manners where the input cost is less than the output value with the additional value coming from a process in nature (sun and photosynthesis, or geologic actions for example).
You've clearly never actually done the flow chart, huh?
You're talking about wealth, not money. Wealth indeed cannot be created out of thin air and is based on converting inputs into higher value outputs. Money in contrast can be created at will, and is, all the time.
Aren't you talking about bond issuance? Yes, no money is printed then. It's printed when the central bank buys the bond back from the open market using new money.
>How are bonds repaid?
They aren't, the central bank indefinitely rolls them over.
No, bonds held by the federal reserve are rolled over. The debt is paid back but it is immediately replaced with new debt of equivalent value, off of the open market. The process is described here: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/treasury-rollover-faq
>On the auction settlement date, the maturing Treasury securities are exchanged for the newly issued Treasury securities.
In net, the debt is only paid back when the central bank is actively reducing its treasury holdings, by rolling over less than the total amount of maturing debt. That is basically the reverse process of 'printing money', it takes the money back out of the wider economy.
>Why do you think people buy them?
Certainly 'people' buy them because they intend to get paid back, yes, but the central bank doesn't have the same motives. It increases and decreases the amount of treasuries it holds in order to control the money supply. That's the whole purpose of it holding treasuries.
The level of disingenuous is absurd at this point.
Do investors get paid in exchange for returning the bonds?
Yes.
The fact that the government repeats the process is irrelevant to the simple fact that the Cash printed is done so by first securing an equal amount of funds to back them which is then returned with interest to the bond holder, inherently meaning that the Cash is not printed out of nothing but rather printed explicitly to represent real world value.
The amount of wealth in circulation and the amount of cash in circulation are not equal.
Wealth is constantly changing as new commodities and services are produced which create new wealth "out of nothing". You're engaged ina complete misattribution of cause and effect
At this point it seems intentionally deceptive...
Poe's law is in effect and I will begin treating you as a troll until proven otherwise.
Sweden didn't lock down but they did print a ton of money. Compare money supply growth for UK vs Sweden. It's the same and occurred at the same time. Lockdowns weren't the only pandemic spending measures unfortunately. All governments everywhere massively pumped the money supply to pay for "whatever it takes" and now the bill has come due:
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/sweden-money-su...
> Do you really think none of this matters, or do your political leanings tell you it's always the government's fault?
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, however, this basic insight is easy to get confused about because there's a large gap between theory and practice when it comes to this metric.
In theory inflation cannot occur without money printing, because a rise in prices of something like oil or food must be compensated by a fall in prices elsewhere as demand for that less essential thing disappears. People re-allocate their financial decisions towards the thing increasing in prices, businesses compensate by lowering prices to try and increase demand, it balances out.
Several things complicate this simple picture in practice.
One is that government inflation metrics don't include all prices. Indeed they cannot because it's too difficult to collect that data and prices constantly change. Also, governments like to play games with inflation statistics because if you can confuse people about inflation you get to pay for election pledges with money printing and then blame inflation on external factors, and because people tend to vote for whoever promises to spend more without raising taxes it's a quick way to hack democracy. So they usually define inflation only in terms of a small subset of all prices. If you do that then you can obviously have inflation even in the absence of money printing because you're ignoring the prices that fall.
Another problem is that in a sufficiently damaging period of price instability, some goods and services may simply cease being available. Everyone is spending all their money on heating their homes and other businesses go bankrupt as a consequence. At this point the price of the thing effectively goes to infinity, it just can't be obtained at any price, but that ruins the calculations and so governments do substitutions within the basket of prices, asserting that X is a substitute for Y even if in reality X is quite different (e.g. different kinds of meat). There are lots of hacks like these in how the stats are calculated.
Yet another problem is that money printing is somewhat circular in a fractional reserve system with very low reserve ratios and there are lots of feedback loops. If the government prints lots of money, then gives it to people whilst simultaneously banning the spending of it then it will appear they printed lots of money without causing inflation. When they stop banning the spending of it, that will show up as inflation even if the money printing has stopped. This is what's happening now, as governments shovelled money into people's pockets during lockdowns but there was nothing open to spend it on.
Nonetheless, we usually think of inflation has being caused by money printing because most of the time prices aren't being affected by wars or oil cartels and when that does occur, the prices which rise are being compensated by other prices that are falling or disappearing (which is a loss of wealth). It may just not be obvious.