Tag Archives: money supply

Money-Supply Growth Turns Negative for First Time in 28 Years, by Ryan McMaken

Posted on January 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

In a fiat-debt addicted economy, negative money supply inevitably precedes contraction. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

Money supply growth fell again in November, and this time it turned negative for the first time in 28 years. November’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the “high” levels experienced from 2009 to 2013.

Since then, the money supply growth has slowed quickly, and we’re now seeing the first time the money supply has actually contracted since the 1990s. The last time the year-over-year change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November of 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for 15 months, finally turning positive again in January of 1996.

During November 2022, year-over-year (YOY) growth in the money supply was at -0.28 percent. That’s down from October’s rate of 2.59 percent, and down from November 2021’s rate of 6.66 percent.

tms1

The money supply metric used here—the “true” or Rothbard-Salerno money supply measure (TMS)—is the metric developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno, and is designed to provide a better measure of money supply fluctuations than M2. The Mises Institute now offers regular updates on this metric and its growth. This measure of the money supply differs from M2 in that it includes Treasury deposits at the Fed (and excludes short-time deposits and retail money funds).

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Interest rates, money supply, and GDP, Alasdair Macleod

Posted on December 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

Alasdair Macleod is one of the few economists out there who actually touts honest economics and is not just a political whore. From Macleod at goldmoney.com:

That the world is on the edge of a monetary and economic cliff is becoming increasingly obvious. And becoming more obviously permanent than transient, price inflation will almost certainly lead to rising interest rates. Rising bond yields, falling equity markets and debt-triggered insolvencies will naturally follow.

According to the economists prevalent in official circles, a prospective mix of so-called deflation and rising prices are contradictory, should not happen at the same time, and therefore cannot be explained. Yet that is the prospect they now face. The errors in their lack of economic judgement have evolved from the time when central banks began to manipulate their currencies to achieve economic objectives and then to subsequently dismiss the evidence of policy failure. It has been a cumulative process for the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England since the 1920s, which can only now end in a final catastrophic failure.

The denial of reasoned economic theory, embodied in a preference by state actors for state-driven outcomes over free markets, has led to this cliff-edge. This article explains some of the key errors in economic and monetary theory that have taken the world to this point — principally the relationships between interest rates, money supply, and GDP.

Introduction

Following the First World War, central banks have not only acted as lender of last resort, which was the role the Bank of England and its imitators took on for themselves in the preceding decades, but they have increasingly tried to manage economic outcomes. The trail-blazer was pre-war Germany which grasped Georg Knapp’s state theory of money as justification for Prussia’s socialism by currency, eventually ending with the collapse of the paper mark in the post-war years. But the genesis of today’s monetary policies has its foundation in the then newly constituted Federal Reserve Bank, chaired by Benjamin Strong, who in the 1920s collaborated with Norman Montague at the Bank of England who was struggling to contain Britain’s post-WW1 decline.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Capitalism, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, History, Money

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“Inflation Is Always A Political Choice”, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Governments and their central banks are always and everywhere responsible for inflation. And what drives governments and central banks? Politics. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As Jim Reid leaves the Deutsche Bank credit desk for the next few weeks (“I’ll be taking holiday and sending the kids to Easter holiday camp and playing golf every day as courses in the UK open on Monday for the first time in 3 months”), his last Friday “chart of the day” covers an especially sensitive topic: inflation.

As Reid writes, “there is clearly a lot of talk about inflation at the moment and a lot of talk about whether the Fed and ECB (amongst others) will meet their respective targets” However, for Reid personally, and a statement we wholeheartedly agree with, “inflation is largely a political choice in the fiat currency world that we’ve been in since 1971” and he explains why:

When you have full control over how much money you can print and spend, rather than the money supply be fixed to Gold, you can always create inflation if the inclination is there regardless of demographics, digitalisation, globalisation or weak growth.”

Appropriately, today’s CoTD shows average inflation for all the 87 economies that DB has data on going back to 1971 when the US (and with it the vast majority of rest of the world) cut ties to gold. What is remarkable, is that no economy has managed to keep average annual inflation below 2% since, with Switzerland (2.1%), Japan (2.3%), and Germany (2.5%) the closest. Only 28 out of 87 managed to keep inflation below 5% over the full period. The US is at 3.8%.

So, as Reid concludes, “inflation is a choice in a fiat money world. The question is whether politicians will choose it or not, advertently or inadvertently.”

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Money and statistical delusions, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on March 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Much of this article will be tough sledding for noneconomists. For the short version and the upshot of the article, skip to the last section, GDP Fallacies. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

I can prove anything with statistics, except the truth

— Lord Canning, c. 1819

Does Canning’s aphorism still hold true, given that data collection and statistical analysis have progressed beyond all recognition in the last two hundred years? This article tests that proposition.

It is still true, because of the interests for which statistics are deployed. We know, or should know, that CPI indexation of prices fails to reflect the true rate of decline in the purchasing power of fiat currencies. That is at least a simple case of governments saving money on indexation. But being economical with the statistical truth is a far wider practice encompassing input suppression, misleading deployment, and their use to support beliefs and preferred outcomes instead of backing up properly reasoned economic and monetary a priori theory.

This article finds that the application of all these methods corrupt monetary statistics, including the three principal components of the equation of exchange. This analysis is sparked by recent changes to the definition of M1 money supply in the US.

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Inflation Galore at Manufactures, amid Massive Shifts in Demand, Supply-Chain Snags, Shortages, Lack of Shipping Capacity. And They’re Passing it On, by Wolf Richter

Posted on February 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Screwed up supply chains from the coronavirus response and out-of-control fiat debt instrument creation and debt monetization are leading to inflation. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

For now, the story is that it’s just temporary.

For now, the story is that the sudden and massive shifts in the economy in 2020 have caused shortages and distortions in the goods-producing sectors and in shipping and trucking, as consumer spending has shifted from services – such as flying somewhere for vacation and spending oodles of money on lodging and restaurants and theme parks – to goods, particularly durable goods.

The story is that prices are rising because components and commodities are in short supply, and supply chains are dogged by production issues, and are facing transportation constraints, as demand for those goods has suddenly surged. And that all this is temporary.

And the Fed has said it will ignore inflation for a while, that it will allow it to overshoot, and only when it overshoots persistently for some unknown amount of time and becomes “unwelcome” inflation – “unwelcome” for the Fed – that it will try to tamp down on it.

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Gold versus Bitcoin & Death of Money, by Egon von Greyerz

Posted on December 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

If you’re looking at alternatives for present state-backed mediums of exchange, cryptocurrencies are sexier but gold has quite a track record. From Egon von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

2021 is likely to be a year of awakening. This is when the world will start to realise that the $280 trillion global debt has no value and will never be paid back.

But even worse than that, of the $280t a staggering $200t has been created in the last 20 years.

Let’s say that it took 2,000 years to go from zero to $80t in 2000. It doesn’t really matter where we start counting since most of the $80t debt was created after Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.

AS DEBT IMPLODES SO WILL ASSET PRICES

Looking at the other side of the balance sheet, there will be an even bigger shock for investors and property owners as debt implodes. Because asset valuations are a function of the debt. And if debt implodes, which is inevitable, so will asset prices.

This is why prices of stocks, bonds and property will implode by more than 95% in real terms (gold) as I outlined in my article last week.

So it took just under 2000 years for global debt to grow from zero to around $5 trillion in 1971. Thereafter it took 29 years to year 2000 to grow by $75t to $80t. That was the exponential phase.

And now we are in the explosive phase with debt growing by over $200t in 20 years.

Anyone who can’t see what is happening is either blind or hasn’t studied history.

+$5t   – 1,971 years  – Year 0 to 1971
+$75t  –    29 years  – Year 1971 to 2000
+$200t  –  20 years – Year 2000 – 2020

We saw exponential debt expansion 1971 to 2000. Since then the growth has been explosive.

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Posted in Banking, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Governments, History

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Banana Republic Money Debasement In America, by MN Gordon

Posted on December 14, 2019 | 1 comment

The federal government’s debt growth has reached banana republic proportions. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

There are many falsehoods being perpetuated these days when it comes to money, financial markets, and the economy.  But when you cut the chaff, three related facts remain: Uncle Sam needs your money.  He needs a lot of your money.  And he needs it bad!

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit for the first two months of fiscal year 2020 is $342 billion.  This amounts to $36 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last year.  At this rate, Washington’s going to add over $1 trillion to the national debt in FY 2020.

Still, the figures from the CBO aren’t all bad.  Revenues in October and November of 2019 were 3 percent higher than they were in October and November of 2018.  Regrettably, outlays for these two months were 6 percent higher in 2019 than they were in 2018.

Jacks and Jennets both know from experience that taking three steps forward and six steps back is an inefficient way to lose ground.  They also know that the longer this goes on the more ground you lose.  So, too, they know that the more ground you lose the harder it is to make up.

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