Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the […]
Archives
-
-
Biden Administration Inflation problem still growing; even the Washington Post is turning on them
12 Jan 2022
Today’s release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) finally topped 7%, which is the highest rate since 1982, and if you applied the same index methodology used back in 1980, we have now slightly topped the 1980 experience. Yet the Biden Administration cannot acknowledge the reality of how their policies have led to this, as […]
-
CNBC comes to this realization this morning, as it notes: The coronavirus pandemic has led to a new era of inflation inequality, economists warn, in which poor households bear the brunt of rising prices. That’s because a bigger portion of their budget goes toward categories that have spiked in cost. Food is up 6.4% over the […]
-
The Federal Reserve will end its meeting any moment with the expected announcement of an accelerated curtailing of the extreme monetary stimulus it has provided since Mar 2020. The latest published speculation I’ve seen is that the Fed will end the stimulus by Mar ’22, paving the way for 2-3 interest rate hikes in 2022, […]
-
As I related in the last blog post in this series, its seems likely we’re going to have inflation rates greater than the Fed’s goal in the near term (say the next couple of years)–if we don’t have some sort of economic collapse. I say the latter because when you have systematic debasement of the […]
-
Never Mention The D Word
22 Nov 2021
In a period of shortages and inflation, I have been thinking a lot about deflation (maybe I have been dreaming about it). As I watch prices increase, it occurred to me that we only every discuss getting inflation back under control, but we never discuss prices falling back to a certain level. Why are we […]
-
Letter to WSJ on Modern Monetary Theory
22 Nov 2021
This morning I jotted the following note to James Mackintosh, who authored a weekend article on MMT and my former professor, L. Randall Wray. Mr. Mackintosh Thanks for the article on MMT; as a former student of Randy Wray during the 1990s, I appreciate seeing the consistency of his thought, even though I still see […]
-
Transitory: The Fed’s new Dirty Word. A short series on inflation, part 4–Putting it all together.
16 Nov 2021
After months of denying that inflation was a problem (just transitory you see), Joe Biden appears to be finally getting the memo (maybe he’s even reading BATG!?). It was amazing on Sunday seeing some of the Democratic talking head analysts act as if Mr. Biden could just pivot on his message and he could get […]
-
In part 1 of this series, we looked at a basic macro model of the forces of how supply and demand interact, which can lead to increased price levels. In part 2, we looked at how changes in the money supply can affect the price level. In this blog post, we’re going to think more […]
-
Democrats Prepare to Own the Coming Inflation
25 Oct 2021
Contrary to the motivational speakers, if you want something bad enough, you’ll do bad things to get it, and get bad results. The Democratic Party is preparing to walk over the cliff with their tax and spend bill, and they will have no escape from the inflationary effects to follow. It won’t matter that this […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach