A daily dose of philosophical food for your noodle... bacon for your brain!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

When Will the Inflation Hit?

By Paul Hsieh

Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy discusses this alarming graph of money supply over time:



Sooner or later, this increase in the money supply is going to create tremendous inflation. I don't know how long it will take. Zywicki notes:

Why has this incredible boost in the money supply had no impact? Presumably because the "velocity" of money has remained low -- people and banks are hoarding money, rather than spending, borrowing, and lending it. Assuming velocity rises again, however, we may be looking at an inflationary spiral like we've never seen before in this country.
And Peter Robinson notes in his post, "We've Never Been Here Before":
Note, incidentally, the tiny little wiggle at the year 2000. That represents the Y2K monetary expansion, judged huge at the time. There are plenty of people who would argue that the Fed's efforts to shrink the money supply afterwards -- that is, Greenspan's mopping up operation -- burst the high-tech bubble, causing the last downturn. How will the Fed mop up after this expansion?
Of course, other countries have gone down this road before.

And as Stephen Moore pointed out on the Glenn Beck show, "This story does not have a happy ending."

I think we're in for some "interesting" times ahead...

Comment Rules

Rule #1: You are welcome to state your own views in these comments, as well as to criticize opposing views and arguments. Vulgar, nasty, and otherwise uncivilized comments will be deleted.

Rule #2: These comments are not a forum for discussion of any and all topics. Please stay roughly on-topic.

You can use some HTML tags in your comments -- such as <b>, <i>, and <a>.

Back to TOP