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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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Keeping supply stable seems like something that could be achieved by an NAP-king. It’d be more expensive, in the short run, than our free market solution. That’s not inflation, but paying a price for antifragility. So that works towards keeping inflation down.

What does the NAP-king’s ideal money supply look like? Are you thinking of something as technocratic as @IGI-111’s digital deflation (or a more conventional version of literally decirculating currency)? I’m trying to get a handle on what deflationary policy looks like without the constraints of politics.

I'm unusually for liking crypto but also recognizing some inflation is probably ideal to shift the balance somewhat against creditors and in favor of borrowers. I would however like this rate of inflation to be stable and predictable, which is in theory what the current fed is tasked with as the problem isn't as simple as just having the money supply grow linearly because the overall size of the economy and number of participants isn't static. I think something like the fed should exist but with constraints, more than anything being forbidden from printing more money for the sake of paying for policy, perhaps the inflation targeted money would go straight to the federal budget as a base tax on all cash holders but anything more than the exact amount measured to keep inflation at an ideal level would need to be raised through taxes or debt.

I find @IGI-111's suggestion strange and don't think it'd work very well in practice.

I don't think stable, predictable inflation shifts the balance between creditors and borrowers. Lenders would just increase the nominal interest rate to get the same real interest rate.

The reason economists today support a small, stable rate of inflation is that it keeps money circulating and prevents deflation, which would be disastrous economically.

It does shift the balance in favor of borrowers generally because it puts pressure on creditors to lend money or watch their capital depreciate. It's a component of why deflation would be disastrous economically. If it costs you every day you are cash heavy then you're going to be much more willing to lend.

As long as the long run rate of deflation is less than the real interest rate paid on other safe, liquid dollar denominated assets like treasuries that doesn't really matter much. I don't think you understand someone holding cash is essentially already lending their resources out at 0% interest.

This is the best explanation I can think of for what we're talking about.

To be clear I'm not for monetarism, my preferred way of doing it is to use sound money instead of trying to plan the size of the money supply.

But if you're going to plan, that's how I would do it.

instead of trying to plan the size of the money supply.

The money supply isn't set by God - someone is choosing it. If you use a gold standard, that is likely to be foreign gold speculators - or in the most famous case of an inappropriate monetary contraction with megadeath consequences, a foreign central bank.

Seriously, the reason why monetary policy is hard is that the use of money as store of value and money as medium of exchange conflict - money which is hoarded is not circulating. Stablish prices and fullish employment require a stablish supply of circulating money, but the demand for hoarded money can vary rapidly due to speculation. So you either need sufficiently and predictably high inflation that the demand for hoarded money is consistently negligible relative to the demand for circulating money, or you need to vary the supply of money to match hoarder demand.

The classical gold standard that actually existed, as opposed to the one which modern goldbugs think should have existed, depended on the ability of the big fractionally reserved central banks (the Bank of England, the Banque de France, the Reichsbank before WW1, the Federal Reserve Banks after WW1) to print money - particularly to carry out their lender-of-last-resort function. The NBER paper I link to makes the argument that when the Banque de France tried to move closer to a full-reserve gold standard without deflating the French economy (in effect by redeeming GBP and USD for gold and hoarding the gold), it crashed the system causing the great depression.

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