Home » Posts tagged "Money Supply"

Tag Archives: Money Supply

Stimulus, to infinity and beyond


There was a beautiful symmetry to last week’s policy announcement by the Fed. Precisely a week after the ECB had pledged its commitment to unlimited purchases of Euro Zone government bonds, the Fed declared that its new round of debt monetization – ‘quantitative easing’ or QE3 – would be open-ended. Read the rest of the article by my Cobden Centre colleague, Detlev Schlichter: Stimulus, to infinity and beyond.

Tags: , ,

The awful unspoken truth about QE


Via Conservative Home’s blog The Deep End, an interesting question about QE: If the Government is just going to print money, why can’t we have some? Of course, if you started to give the cash directly to the people, then they might finally understand that our entire economic system runs on funny money. And who knows what would happen then? Henry Ford is supposed to have answered their question: It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand […]

Tags: , , , , ,

Expect the Bank of England to be surprised by inflation in the next couple of months


Post Image

The Bank of England’s latest Inflation Report forecasts falling inflation: However, my preferred measure of the money supply, MA from Kaleidic Economics, is now rising at 6% year on year, in contrast to the Bank’s measures of broad money: There are other factors at work too but there’s a certain inevitability about headlines like “Bank surprised by shock inflation data” before the summer is out.

Tags: , , ,

If this is capitalism, I am not a capitalist


Post Image

I spoke last night in the general debate on the economy, saying*: As I rise to speak I am reminded of a quotation from an economist who was a fierce critic of Keynes, a chap called Henry Hazlitt, who said: “Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.” We have heard today some moving accounts of individual and collective suffering in different regions of the country and among different sections of the public. We should […]

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Article on the money supply at thejc.com


Post Image

Via Honesty is best policy | The Jewish Chronicle, my article on measuring the money supply: Ask economists how much money there is and you will get many answers. You know money is what you can exchange for real goods and services, but economists often include things like time deposits, which cannot be spent because they have fixed terms. Money is one half of every transaction, so its supply really matters. According to my colleague Dr Anthony J Evans of Kaleidic […]

Tags: , , , , ,

Market crash ‘could hit within weeks’, warn bankers – Telegraph


Via Market crash ‘could hit within weeks’, warn bankers – Telegraph: “The problem is a shortage of liquidity – that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008,” said one senior London-based bank executive. “I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before,” said a senior credit banker at a major European bank. A quick look at Kaleidic Economics’ […]

Tags: , ,

Inflation and government borrowing


In his short article Inflation and You, Ludwig von Mises explains inflation itself, the social and economic effects of inflation, who inflation’s victims are, the futility of attempts to hedge against inflation, the moral and political effects of inflation and, finally, inflation and government borrowing. I thoroughly recommend the whole article, but I reproduce the section on government borrowing, which seems particularly pertinent at the moment: Inflation and Government Borrowing The writer, having witnessed the course of inflations in one European […]

Tags: , , , , , , ,

US money supply plunges at 1930s pace as Obama eyes fresh stimulus – Telegraph


Via The Telegraph. The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history. But this begs the question, “Why is the money supply dependent on interest rates and government spending?” It turns out the great economist Irving Fisher told us back in the 1930s: banks create and destroy credit money by granting and calling […]

Tags: , , , , ,