In a purely fiat currency regime, a sustained inflation or deflation is a policy decision.
Since few systems in this world are pure, one has to account for exogenous factors and endogenous lags.
But it remains, deflation or inflation are the result of policy decisions in a fiat regime. If one does not understand that, then there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work in a modern monetary system which operates free from a hard external standard.
It is not an idle point, by the way, to understand that in a fiat regime there is a significantly greater latitude in policy decision than otherwise.
That is why central banks wish to maintain a fiat regime, and not to be encumbered by an external standard such as gold.
Once one realizes that it is a policy decision, one realizes that this 'inflation versus deflation" is not about some deterministic outcome based on market forces, but rather on a policy decision, what the governance thinks "should" be done.
Granted the Fed does not have perfect latitude. There are the restraints of law and the Congress, and the necessary cooperation of the Treasury and the banking system.
However, the most legitimate, the least endogenous limitation in a fiat system is the value of the bond and the dollar to external market actors. This is the tradeoff that the Fed and Treasury must make in weighing the outcome of their actions.
All this backslapping and scoring of points between the inflation and deflation 'camps' is particularly obtuse because this monetary chess match is most heatedly being argued about by people who think they are watching a game of ping pong.
Yes we will likely see a deflationary episode in the short term, certainly in prices as the aggregate demand contracts, as the Fed fights the credit collapse. We briefly saw deflation at the trough in 2002, depending on how one chooses to define deflation.
But, make no mistake, the Fed can print money and monetize Treasury debt until the cows come home. Bernanke was not lying when he put his cards on the table in his famous helicopter speech some years ago. He wasn't just trying to fool us as some would hypothesize.
They will monetize debt and 'print money' covertly and quietly because they do not wish to trash the Bond and Dollar, since this is the fuel of their machine.
Economic cargo cultists frequently resort to imaginary restrictions on the Fed, such as they can't do this or they can't do that. Growth in money supply must come from the lending of the private banking system. The Fed "only controls the monetary base" and "doesn't set interest rates."
That is all bollocks. It is playing with words, parsing the truth, Clintonesque.
First, there are some gray areas in the statutes that prohibit the Fed from DIRECTLY buying debt from the Treasury without subjecting it to the discipline of the marketplace, ie. taking through a public auction first. The law is soft on this point, but one might contend it is not necessary to change it if the Fed has one or two banks that are policy captives. We believe they do.
Second, growth in the money supply has to come from the lending of banks, the creation of new debt, only when you have run out of 'old debt' and prior obligations to spending.
Does ANYONE who has been following the fiscal discussions in the US believe that we will run out of debt in our lifetimes? The lending of the banks, the creation of new debt, is a measure of economic vitality in some dimensions yes. But growth by debt creation is NOT the only way for an economic system to function, and it may indeed may not be the best. But regardless, it is not necessary while there is debt that can be monetized, and certainly we have a surfeit of that.
The only limitation on the Fed and Treasury are the Congress and the acceptance of the dollar and the Bond in a fiat regime. Period.
Unless there is some greater conspiratorial policy reason, any net debtor that chooses deflation rather than inflation of the means of the repayment of their debt should have their head examined.
There are those who believe that the US "creditor class" will seek to encourage liquidationism and deflation to protect their private fortunes, created during the bubble period.
This is not actually a bad theory, except that the real creditor class lives in China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Since two of them are virtual client states of the US and the third is bound to its industrial policy the status quo seems to have some momentum, despite the best attempts of Zimbabwe Ben and His Merry Banksters to denigrate our currency and their customers' sovereign wealth.
One might suspect that the domestically wealthy (note the distinction between that and 'creditor class') would like to channel the bulk of the inflationary effort into their own pockets and benefits for the bulk of the effort before it stops short of hyperinflation, and then cut off the spending.
Hey, we're already doing that! Isn't it nice to see how things work?
People forget that in many ways this is a replay of the Great Depression, wherein a Republican minority in the Congress, and ultimately the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, fought the New Deal tooth and nail, to the point of class warfare and a suspected plan to take the country into fascism in sympathy with the industrialists of Germany and Italy.
It was interesting to see the "Chicago School" A Dark Age of Economics making arguments against fiscal stimulus that would be worthy of freshmen economics students. One can make the case that these mighty brains are so highly specialized that they have forgotten the basics. An alternative reason might be a willingness to declare that 2+2=5 if it suits your ideological bias and those who must be obeyed. It was just a tiny bit satisfying to see Krugman and DeLong administer and intellectual beating to these luminaries.
So, as you may have noticed, Jesse is cranky today, and not merely because he was rousted from a warm bed to clear a snow-covered driveway. It is also because this country is in a dangerous, potentially fatal, situation and is suffering from an absolutely incredible, ongoing lack of adult supervision and serious discussion about the basic issues. Deception and spin is no longer an exception, but standard operating procedure.
Right now we are still in a 'credit crunch' which is a predictable (and we did predict it last year and even earlier than that) result of a collapsing bubble. In the very short term it was a liquidity problem, as the system seized, but as that was addressed the true problem is exposed as a solvency, not a liquidity, problem. And that problem exists because those that should take the hit for the writeoffs to resolve their insolvency want desperately to pass it on to someone else, eg. the public. There is still an enormous amount of accounting legerdemain (or would that be "ledgerdemain?")
There is not a shortage of liquidity; there is a scarcity of trustworthy market information in terms of value and risk that is causing a seizure in credit growth from fear. Why take 5% from someone who may already be bankrupt when you can accept a relatively no-risk 2% from the Fed? As the waters reced in this recession one would think the nakedness would be more apparent, except that the Treasury and Fed have been supplying portable cabanas to their favorite emperors, to spare their tender sensitivies and enormous bonuses.
We allow that a deflation can occur. If the Fed raised short term rates to 20% tomorrow and started draining, and raised reserve requirements to 50%, we would see a true monetary deflation in short order. But with regards to the here and now, as opposed to some alternate hypothetical universe, currently The Fed Is Monetizing Debt and Inflating the Money Supply.
We would like to see an intelligent examination of the series of policy errors that created the one decent example of a contemporaneous deflation in a fiat regime, that of modern Japan. Because it would then help people to get beyond it, and consider the other twenty or more examples of countries facing serious inflation or even hyperinflation since World War II. But let's just suffice to say that the problems in Japan were somewhat particular to their situation and it was a genuine policy choice which they made.
We might also make the same errors, or even repeat the errors of the Fed in the 1930 of withdrawing liquidity too precipitously because of a misplaced fear of inflation. But with a Democratic administration and a more knowledgable, almost complacent Fed in place this does not seem probable to us at all.
The country is still drunk on easy money and hubris and preoccupied with bread-and-circuses debate between political and financial strategists masquerading as policy experts, while insiders loot the country.
All this noise serves to do is to distract the nation from a identifying the causes of the current crisis and instituting meaningful reforms to keep us from throwing a quick fix at our latest disaster and setting up another cycle of bubble, boom and bust again.
There can be no sustained recovery in the economy until there is financial reform, and a revival of the individual consumer through an increase in the median wage. Right now consumers are attempting to repair their balance sheets by defaulting on debt. This is not productive in the longer term. And it is a bit of an ironic exercise as well, since the debt is being tacked right back on to the taxpayers through the public balance sheet in the government bailouts.
Why is every solution being addressed to and through the unreformed corporate sector? Is it because the best way to deal with a scandal which you caused is to put your own people in charge of investigating it, and setting the agenda for the discussion of potential reactions to maintain the status quo? Anyone who has been in a large corporation should be well familiar with such an obvious tactic. This is likely a reflection of our distorted economic and public policy infrastructure.
A proper examination of relative value and risk cannot be expected yet until we sober up. Let's hope that happens soon, and not as the result of critically damaging economic and social pain.
