Tag Archives: dollar

The Beggar’s Opera

Though a lot of hot money was poured into the trade in the last quarter of 2020, there is still much reluctance on the part of economists – always prone to a spot of Under-consumption fallacy – to wholly embrace the idea that prices are beginning to rise and that the path ahead is likely to be an inflationary one. That path will inevitably not be smooth, nor its ascent uninterrupted, but it is hard to see where we slow the climb or take a different turning – or even that sufficient will exists to choose that alternative were it ever to come up on our satnav.

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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.

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Tighten Your Belts: Market Observations

We ended the summer by saying that – barring another disastrous, COVID19-inspired, mass governmental embargo on everyday economic activity – the miners, makers, movers, and merchants of the things we need to run our lives when we are not scrolling through Instagram or pretending to pay attention to a yet another pointless Zoom conference would begin to make up ground lost in lockdown to the providers of such diversions. State interference would henceforth take other, more chronic forms of hindrance: tending deliberately to boost demand while making its satisfaction progressively more difficult. So far – broadly speaking – so good.

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