Most people associate ‘inflation’ with rising prices, but the disease goes much deeper than that. Inflation is a phenomenon wherein money becomes so abundant it disrupts relative price formation and hence interferes with the vital transmission of information about the state of the countless interactions of supply and demand, plenty and scarcity, which take place on the market. As the fever rises, mistakes accumulate, conflicts intensify, timings clash, finances become stretched, and coherence is lost. A rising price is one thing. Prices -plural- rising at varying speeds and in an ever less predictable manner is a much more dangerous pathology.
Category Archives: Budget
Bank of England, Bitcoin, BOJ, Budget, Central banks, Commodities, CPI, Crypto, ECB, Emerging Markets, Equities, Europe, Federal Reserve, Fiscal policy, Fixed Income, Government, Inflation, Japan, Keynesianism, Macro, Metals, money supply, Politics, Production, Revenues, Tech, UK, UK Treasury, US Treasury, USA
Burning Holes in Idlers’ Pockets
Inflation, Milton Friedman famously said, is a monetary phenomenon. But it is also one given the readiest of outlets through recourse to what we call ‘fiscal’ policy – i.e., by spendthrift governments borrowing money created at their call and forced into the system by means of warfare, welfare, contracting, cronyism, bureaucratic expansion and plain old boondogglery. Arguably, this is where we find ourselves today, in a world where supply is no longer likely to meet demand as abundantly and as effortlessly as has been the case these past twenty years.
Bond yields have started to creep higher – and curves to flex steeper – as the market begins to fret that the willing fiscal subservience of the central bank can only presage a coming inflation. With bond volatility still reasonably cheap, now might be the time to take cognisance of this.
The Johnson government’s approach to COVID19 has been a toxic mix of contradiction, vacillation, and jackbooted authoritarianism. There seems no exit strategy and no end to the spiralling cost. We take a critical look at the impact on the budget impact and discuss what it means for inflation.
[This is the first of a series of short bulletins called, ‘The Course of the Exchange’, in memory of John Castaing’s widely-read updates, posted in Jonathan’s Coffee House in Change Alley, 300 years ago]
With the latest CBO estimates for the US Federal budget for August just in, we are again in a position to take stock of the scale of the burden which the COVID-19 lockdowns and more general restrictions have imposed upon the nation’s finances. It does not make for happy reading.
With his latest sophomoric outpourings, Ray Dalio confirms our impression that here we have a man who is undoubtedly a first-class money-maker but who has recently quit that lucrative last in order to display his second-rate intellect by peddling distinctly third-hand ideas. [To listen instead to my podcast on this, please go to CantillonCH at […]
The so-called ‘war’ over trade being conducted by the US & China has given rise to much ill-informed commentary about its supposed benefits, its prospective victims, and China’s putative responses.