by centralstump » Mon 24 Nov 2008, 10:35:38
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'H')ey Reverse,
I've been reading that supposedly this won't cause hyperinflation, as the money is just sloshing around in the banks and not hitting the real economy.
Ugh, it's all so over my head
As for Bloomberg, give them some credit. They are at least connecting all the dots and pointing out that this constitutes HALF of every morsel of labor produced in this nation for an entire year.
And they're also pointing out how it "dwarfs" the only portion of all this approved by our elected reps in Congress -- the $700 billion TARP.
I'm still of the opinion it won't cause hyper-inflation, because the money is basically going to resolve out debt on the books, its being burned up as fast as it is printed. NO matter how much money is printed here, its not going to reinflate the economy, because you did not just deflate here, you POPPED the balloon.
Put it this way. There is no place to inject money into the economy where it won't get immediately sucked up into the black hole of debt. If you hand out money to individual taxpayers, all they do with it is pay off debt on credit cards and mortgages to get current, they don't buy anything new. They are STILL in the hole after this.
The currency is already Toast, you can see this in the lack of reality in the equities market and commodities market. You can't value properly any of these things because the actual value of the currency is unclear. Well, its not unclear to me, its worthless, but the folks involved in trading don't accept this yet, they still are looking for a way OUT of the dilemma. Other countries at this point would of course love to decouple from the dollar, but it really wouldn't help because then THOSE fiat currencies also really have no underpinning.
I still do not see runaway inflation occuring here before the monetary system collapses. There just is no time left for that to happen, the deflation in industry, the rapid rise in unemployment and the disappearance of tax revenue are all happening cocurrently and too fast to inflate out of this mess. Its not like 1979. Its not like 1929 either, because you really cannot base a currency on Gold anymore, there isn't enough of the stuff around to do that with.
Anyhow, I can't say I know exactly what game will be played here to keep some form of economic system running, I'm sure something will be substituted, but this system is just TOAST. You can't fix it.
Reverse Engineer
I've been noticing this parting of ways by a bunch of smart people. There are those that say this is going to result in Inflation long-term and there are those that say it is only countering deflation and there will only be less deflation.
At first glance the deflationists seem to be the ones making the most sense. However, I think they are forgetting one important fact.
1) One thing that happens is that money goes away.
2) but the other thing is that a "good/service" disappears. While economists want to call those things capital, we have been treating financial instruments as "goods/services" for a long time now.
If the money disappears in lock step with some sort of good or service, it seems in the future, the money created to replace the money lost is going to contribute to higher prices on all the good and services that remain.
I actually don't know where to go to find numbers to support this argument. I was just throwing it out there to see what other people thought.