What's inflation?

Just a reminder, I posted a link to an article for discussion. I post a lot of links to articles for discussion. That doesn't mean I understand everything in the articles, or vouch for everything in the articles. It means I expect discussion so I can better understand the article. If I were held to account for everything in every article I post I could only post on political science, and maybe only on con law. I am usually not stalked all over the board for posting a link to an article, either.

That said, here is the response of the guy who wrote the article:

The Fed buys securities and pays for them with money they created out of thin air. These transactions occur as Securities Sold Under Agreement to Repurchase on the Seller's (Banks") books. It is Money and Banking 101, done under Open Market Operations. The poster is wrong.

The Fed buys securities and pays for them with money they created out of thin air....

This is true, only sometimes they don't even use the air.

When you walk by a bank and you see painted on the glass "Assets over $3,000,000" you may be imagining that inside the bank is a money bin bigger than Scrooge Mc Duck's. The fact is that when you deposit $10 in the bank, your deposit is not an asset (to them), it's a liability. The banks assets are the loans the bank has made.

You and I create money out of thin air too; in fact most money is created by ordinary citizens like us. Every time you loan someone money (or put it in the bank, buy a bond, etc.) you keep your money in the form of the asset, and the recipient now has money that didn't exist before the loan was made. Interest rate hikes and cuts can help us or keep us from creating money. The Fed has an effect on interest rates but not nearly as much as it wants us to think --we have the most power because we have most of the money.

People often get money confused with wealth. You can have a stack of twenties on the table and owe it to the bank --you've got money and no wealth. There are other people who have wealth and no money --every once in a while we hear about a farmer who's land-poor, meaning all land no cash.

Thank you.

Concerning the judges: I don't see them as infallible. They can be as corrupt as any gangster. So the fact that they don't have a problem with something means nothing.

Let's be a little more accurate. Buying gold from a dealer is not redemption any more than buying a coat from a store is redemption. In order for there to be a true redemption, you need a claim check for a specific item such as the coat on rack 22, or twenty dollars in gold coin payable on demand to bearer. Big big difference.

I see your inflation chart and concede that the large amplitude graph until 1950 shows painful inflations and deflations which appear to average zero. Then after 1950 except for the inflation of the '70s, there appears to be a +6% average inflation rate. It's a tradeoff, one set of problems for another. We don't have to suffer the pain of deflations anymore but then we do have to deal with persistent inflation that is never corrected.

Regarding the inflations and deflations, why so much inflation, the deflation? Because even under a gold standard so called, banks found ways to proliferate paper in excess of deposit of metal. Nicholas Biddle was infamous during the Jackson administration for repeatedly extending credit, then calling it back in, deliberately to make a mess of the economy hoping people would blame Jackson for their suffering. They didn't. Jackson won a second term and stopped the 2nd Bank of the US. Prior to 1929, the Federal Reserve was already in business flooding the economy with paper money that went into the stock market. So, bankers not content to follow the law are to blame for those inflations and deflations, not the gold standard.

An example of an inflation that could be blamed on gold was the one that happened in Spain after gold was looted from the South Amer Indians; Silver after the Franco Prussian war, Germany dumped Silver and established a gold standard with gold that previously belonged to the French.

America was never as strong or wealthy....I credit technology and liberty with these developments, not the advent of the Federal Reserve. If anything, we have prospered in spite of it. What about now? China is growing stronger, are we? As our factories are shuttered are laid off factory workers creating enough new wealth to more than make up for the lost business to China?

A sense of responsibility.....what could be more irresponsible, more immoral, more wrong, more unlawful, than robbing creditors and bestowing favors on debtors by brute force of government? Governement is the biggest debtor of all. To the contrary, the epitome of responsibility is to pay just debts in full with full value; this can only be done with gold, perhaps imperfectly at times, but it is as close to perfection as one can hope to be. Inherent in the tendering of paper is the near certainty that the purchasing power value tendered, regardless of face value, dollar for dollar, is not equal to the purchasing power value specified by contract.

I disagree with your opinion, respectfully, that it was the gold standard itself that caused the suffering to which you refer. I offer instead that the suffering was caused by the titanic battles over control of the economy between the friends of paper money and the hard money advocates, and that the unfortunate victims were caught in the middle.

Respectfully.

Amazing-- we disagree but we're not questioning each others' manhood. Weird. But good..

Let's use use actual observations to build understanding of commerce on a good moral foundation.

moral foundation Let's agree that Good is absolute and it requires honor and forbids stealing or lying. This has to mean that the world is good, humanity is good, America is a force for good, and America's legal and financial system is the best in the world. This is proved by the fact that a dishonest judge or banker stands out in sharp contrast to thousands of their peers. Even though it's wrong for us to malign these people as a whole, we'll agree that they're human, so I suppose that nine out of ten bad things that they (and we) do, have to be because of stupidity and not misfeasance. This is both good news (we really do mean well) and bad news (sin can be forgiven but stupid is forever).

Most judges think the US Constitution says gold is optional. If you disagree then you'll either need to get a clarifying amendment passed or you'll have to cope with the consensus. These guys are trying to be fair; it's wrong to say they're "corrupt as any gangster".

In contrast, gold is not morally good or bad; neither is silver, iron, carbon, or iridium --only inasmuch and it helps or hinders us in doing good things like being honest and feeding our families.

Let's observe together that the "gold standard" was lots things --from the '20's when we had "gold" written on our money to the 70's when the BrettonWoods international gold standard was dumped and gold got put on the open market along with lithium, sulphur, and chlorine. Let's decide whether this change helped or hindered us in being honest and more able to feed our families.

understanding of commerce Over the course of this change, the percentage of Americans with jobs increased by 50%, each of these worker's earnings has increase five fold, and business cycles are not nearly the hellacious chaos they once were.

Maybe you don't believe that changing the money made the improvement; but you've at least got to accept the fact that it sure as hell didn't hurt. Most people who serve humanity by working with money (hey, like somebody's got to do it) say that tying the value of the dollar to gold made it hard for them to keep people employed. On the day in 1933 when Roosevelt took executive action in dropping gold, the stock market shot up ten percent, and the next day another six.

It's wrong to say that our inflation is a six percent problem --if you look closer, it's more like a two percent average. But what of it? Inflation is like gold, it's only good or bad as it affects our ability to be honest (what, you say you didn't know we have inflation?) and to feed our families (people don't starve now like they did in the '30's).

It is not honest to say that America's factories have closed. It's not true to say that people's savings are at greater risk now than they were in 1922. China has a primitive economy and I wish them well. They appear to be following Russia by learning about commerce the hard way. Americans seem to be a bit smarter than that.

Good evening. I had to read the thread before responding...

This is how we're sticking it to the ChiComs foolish enough to buy our national debt.

You are correct in the short term. The intersection of the supply and demand curve of money (i.e. interest rates, M1) will move to the right eventually. You see it now. Greenspan or Berneke have to increase the Fed funds rate to assist the curves to an equilibrium. The ECB (and Japan's Central bank) will have to do the same thing, thereby lowering the supply of M1 by charging more for a loan. Private banks follow. The economies of trading partners depend upon stable currencies.

Although methinks the Chicoms know this too. That's why they are resisting letting their currency float, and stalling on instituting stricter and more open central bank regulations. The Chicoms have a LOAD of pent up inflation, and there is not enough direct foreign investment to mask it. It's just a matter of time.

5.56mm

Actually, my next tactical move was going to be to question your manhood. Sorry you had to go and ruin the surprise.

You leave me little to rebut without being a nit picker. I stand corrected on the 6%.

I think our difference of opinion will continue but I'll watch events unfold as time goes by and see if I can find the greater good in the kind of money we use.

I still believe that gold gives more power to the individual to strictly control to what use his wealth is put. But perhaps the wriggle room provided by an elastic currency and the increase in power for a monetary elite to manage the economy is worth a degree of loss of power to the individual if we as a nation of individuals can provide better lives for our families.

Thanks for an enjoyable exchange.

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