Plateforme Level Extreme
Abonnement
Profil corporatif
Produits & Services
Support
Légal
English
LOL, Here it Comes
Message
De
02/09/2020 19:23:27
 
 
À
02/09/2020 15:38:54
John Ryan
Captain-Cooker Appreciation Society
Taumata Whakatangi ..., Nouvelle Zélande
Information générale
Forum:
Politics
Catégorie:
Économies
Divers
Thread ID:
01675932
Message ID:
01675959
Vues:
52
>>>It will happen because the government needs the money due to the expenses they have incurred/invented/manufactured and the benefits they have promised in exchange for votes and the economic crisis their lockdown created. But as usual, the elites will get loopholes. Business as usual. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
>
>Apparently the plan is to super-inftate as a regrettable consequence of all this money printing. When that happens, not just governments but the citizenry suddenly feels less burden from debt, e.g mortgages magically reduced to relative amounts you can pay off on your credit card, as experienced by our parents' generation who could buy houses for a few thousand in local currency (my parents paid 4000 pounds for their first home) and retire sitting on property worth hundreds of thousands or millions. After selling, that generation suddenly declares inflation to be evil... because it erodes their savings. But if you believe in generational theft, perhaps that's only fair- and why shouldn't our kids' generation see mortgages or student debt reduced to credit card dimensions too? The other victims would be the likes of European dentists and Japanese housewives with their massive saving ability and of course the world's lenders, the Chinese. Just waiting for Donald Trump to declare what a terrific idea this would be. ;-)

Inflation is tricky and dangerous:

1. Western governments require inflation so they can pay off debts in devalued currency. Nothing gets a government's attention faster than any threat of sustained deflation

2. The level of inflation is a confidence game. If the target is arbitrarily raised a lot, prices will have to follow suit immediately. Actual prices could overshoot and you could end up with unmanaged 10 - 15% such as we had in Canada in the early '80s. I'd like to think larger countries/currencies could avoid runs on their currencies and avoid a Weimar Republic/Venezuela situation - extreme or hyper-inflation

3. High(ish) inflation disproportionately affects seniors and others on low/fixed incomes. Those cohorts tend to vote a lot; governments would rather keep them happy. Inflation-indexing benefits doesn't really work; in Canada (at least) I can't recall ever seeing a government program where the inflation-indexed increase actually kept pace with real inflation rates (benefits, income tax exemption limits etc.). In Canada at least, the federal government uses things like income tax exemption limits, tax brackets etc. to slowly and nearly invisibly increase taxes

Here in Canada the BoC's stated inflation goal is 2% p.a. nominal, with a range of 1 - 3% tolerated. It's been that way for many years and the BoC has built a lot of confidence and trust in that number. The savings frogs are boiled very slowly but federal actuaries can see light at the end of the debt/deficit tunnel. If the BoC throws that target away we're looking at 1981 again, and few in Canada want that.
Regards. Al

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." -- Isaac Asimov
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -- Isaac Asimov

Neither a despot, nor a doormat, be

Every app wants to be a database app when it grows up
Précédent
Suivant
Répondre
Fil
Voir

Click here to load this message in the networking platform