Posts Tagged ‘fiat money’

Where do we go from here? A journalist’s questions…

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

We were asked for comments by a journalist. Here are the questions and our answers…

Is this the intellectual failure of mainstream economics, as some have argued?

We believe that at the root of this Global Financial Crisis (GFC) lies the moral failure of humanity. Through this moral failure, the world is allowed to get carried away and believe in what it wants to believe. Mainstream economics provide the intellectual framework for this belief. Strip away this faulty intellectual framework and one will be able to see clearly how humanity is magnificently capable of self-deception. As we wrote in Is this the beginning of the loss of confidence in fiat money?,

Is this crisis a surprise? If you listen to the mainstream economic schools of thought, central bankers, mainstream financial media, captains of the financial industry and so on, it looked as if this looming financial disaster is something that no one can see coming. The common underlying excuse (that was un-said, un-written but implied) goes something like this: ?No one could ever foresee this! It?s impossible! Only hindsight can tell!?

Now, we would like to make it clear that this is completely false. Please note that we are not accusing individuals of lying. Instead, our point is that this excuse is a sign of collective mass delusion. If you look at the 6000 years worth of the history of human civilisation, you will find that humanity is repeatedly capable of mass delusions.

Has the global financial crisis brought to a head a growing dissatisfaction with the corruption of money, as is also being argued in some quarters?

Let recall a story as mentioned in Understanding the big picture in the inflation-deflation debate,

In one of the movies about Marco Polo, it showed a scene whereby Marco Polo was astonished to see his Chinese slave exchanging goods for pieces of paper:

He ask, ?What are you doing??!!!??

His slave replied, ?I am buying something.?

?But money is gold and silver! How can a piece of paper be money?!?!?

If you lived back then, it was obvious why money should not be pieces of paper backed by nothing. Firstly, such money is vulnerable to forgery. Secondly, it can be re-produced at almost no cost. Thirdly, as we said before in Recipe for hyperinflation, the integrity of such money depends on the integrity of the authority that issues it.

Today, the world runs on a fiat monetary system in which money enjoys legal tender status through the authority of the government instead of through the choice of the free market. In today’s credit system, money has become intangible, imaginary and hard to define, to the point that its supply (‘quantity’) can be inflated and deflated from thin air by central banks and the financial system. Currently, the global financial system (private sector), through debt defaults, de-leveraging and so on, is contracting the quantity of ‘money’ (deflation) while governments and central bankers are trying to do the opposite (inflation). The result of such government intervention is extreme volatility in prices. Once this happen, money can no longer function as a yardstick for unit of accounting and store of value. For example, take a look at oil prices from July 2008 till today. Such extreme volatility cannot be simply explained with traditional economic model of supply and demand, which assumes that the integrity of ‘money’ trusted. Once this integrity is broken, prices can no longer convey vital information to the free market. Without this information, the free market breaks down and no long-term planning can be performed (see Real economy suffers while financial markets stuff around with prices).

As long as governments keep on intervening, the situation will get worse and the dissatisfaction will grow.

Will things ultimately stay in the same after some adjusting, or will  the global economy (and the Australian economy) look dramatically different in 12 (24) months time?

We doubt the status quo can be maintained. The genie is already out of the bottle. In due time, we believe the global economy will be very different. The only thing we are not sure is the time-frame. Today’s GFC is the accumulation of decades of unsound monetary system, starting from the severing of the final link between the US dollar and gold in 1971. That breakdown was accelerated after 2001, with Alan Greenspan’s unsound monetary policy.

If it?s true that laissez faire capitalism was given its head to a dangerous degree, what needs to be done now – and can we trust governments and central banking systems to get it right?

Firstly, the laissez faire capitalism was not really laissez fair in the first place. As we explained in What cause booms and busts? Introduction to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory,

If we generally let market forces set the price of things (e.g. stocks, consumer goods, bonds, real estates, etc), then why is it that the price of money (interest rates) should not be chosen by the market? Does the central bank know better than the market to set the ?right? price of money?

We have a centralised command economy (for the price of money) in the midst of a laissez faire free market. True laissez faire will not give so much power to one man (Alan Greenspan) to mismanage. The worst thing we can do is to give more power to the government. Alan Greenspan set the price of money to be too cheap for too long. Credit became too cheap and too easy to get. Obviously, supply more cheap credit is the wrong medicine. The GFC is a correction to what had been distorted for too long. Government interventions to prevent this distortion will prolong the agony and cause other unintended side-effects.

How do you regulate better?

Today, there is one country totally unaffected by the GFC. That country has the most stringent regulation in the world. That country is North Korea.

How does bailing out banks and businesses make sense?

In a free market, the incompetent businesses will go bankcrupt and cede control to the competent. By bailing out businesses and banks, the government is giving an unfair advantage to the incompetent. This introduces moral hazard by rewarding incompetency. As we all know the rest of the story, communism became a failed experiment.

What happens when the bailout money runs out?

Remember, the world is running on a fiat monetary system. ‘Money’ will not run out as long as governments are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy its integrity. Already, Bernanke and company have already thought of what it means by “whatever it takes” (see Bernankeism and hyper-inflation). He once said this,

The conclusion that deflation is always reversible under a fiat money system follows from basic economic reasoning.

…

What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

And what happens to those in the finance world who have done nothing but take risks and do the deals that make the money…how will they cope?

As we questioned before in The myth of financial asset ?investments? as savings,

Can the printing of money, which spawns the growth of an industry to shuffle it, cause a nation to be richer in the long run?

Real prosperity lies in real capital formation and the accumulation of capital goods. Shuffling of ‘money’ is not the path to long-term sustainable wealth. The GFC clearly shows it. It’s time the world gets back to the honest basics.

Who?s MAKING money now (apart from those running insolvency practices)?

There will be bound to be some smart (or lucky) short-term traders who profit from all these volatility. But look at the big picture, no one benefits in a depression- everyone’s standard of living will decline. In such a day, ‘money’ becomes meaningless.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economics/Finance, Looking Forward, Market Observations | 4 Comments »

Is this the beginning of the loss of confidence in fiat money?

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

Events from the past week are tumultuous. It started from the nationalisation of Freddie and Fannie (we were mulling about the implication of nationalisation 2 months ago in How do we all pay for the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?). Then came the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and takeover of Merrill Lynch. Then we have the nationalisation of AIG. Gold prices surged by more than US$100 in two days (it had declined since), which was the most rapid surge in 26 years. At the same time, the Dow plunged by more than 400 points. It looked as if there was a panic from stocks straight to gold, which meant even cash was distrusted.

Then we have another massive rally in stocks for the past two days when there was hope that the US government, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve are doing something to solve the root of the rot in the financial system. Reports come out that they are planning to use taxpayers’ money to buy up bad assets at sale price. As always the case, the devil is in the details. At this point in time, there is no definitive figure on the cost. Make no mistake about this: this is no trivial task. As this New York Times article reported, Ben Bernanke warned the Congressional leaders,

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program ?Good Morning America,? the congressional leaders were told ?that we?re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.?

Mr. Schumer added, ?History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.?

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as ?somber,? Mr. Dodd cut in. ?Somber doesn?t begin to justify the words,? he said. ?We have never heard language like this.?

By now, it should be clear that this global financial disaster has the potential of even surpassing the Great Depression of the 1930s!

Is this crisis a surprise? If you listen to the mainstream economic schools of thought, central bankers, mainstream financial media, captains of the financial industry and so on, it looked as if this looming financial disaster is something that no one can see coming. The common underlying excuse (that was un-said, un-written but implied) goes something like this: “No one could ever foresee this! It’s impossible! Only hindsight can tell!”

Now, we would like to make it clear that this is completely false. Please note that we are not accusing individuals of lying. Instead, our point is that this excuse is a sign of collective mass delusion. If you look at the 6000 years worth of the history of human civilisation, you will find that humanity is repeatedly capable of mass delusions. Always, only the minority could see through the lie. In this case, students and practitioners of the non-mainstream Austrian School of economic thought SAW IT COMING. Some of them sounded the alarm as early as 2004! To press our point further, let’s us show you the chronicle of our warnings in this blog since 2006…

  1. In May 2008, when the world was in denial about the precarious state of the global financial system, Satyajit Das warned that the credit crisis was just the end of the beginning (see Is the credit crisis the end of the beginning?).
  2. Back in November 2007, if you look at the list of major US financial institutions that was compiled by Nouriel Roubini at How solvent are some of the major US financial institutions?, only half of them are left standing. Interestingly, Merrill Lynch was the safest among the insolvents and today, it failed to live. If Merrill Lynch was insolvent, what about the remaining ones today (i.e. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup)?
  3. In June 2007, in Epic, unprecedented inflation, we warned that

    How much longer will the roaring global economy fly? We do not know the answer, for this boom may last longer than what we anticipated. However, please note that in the entire history of humanity, all bubbles (and we repeat, ALL) burst in the end. Thus, a global painful hangover will ensue?the greater the boom, the more painful the eventual bust. This is the theme that we had repeated many times.

    Thus, do not be surprised if a second Great Depression were to strike.

  4. In the same month, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned that the world was in danger of another Great Depression (see Bank for International Settlements warns of another Great Depression).
  5. Back in January 2007, in Spectre of deflation, we wrote that

    But we smell danger.

    It is a danger in which many in the finance industry failed to fully appreciate?deflation. Such complacency is beyond our belief. In the 1990s, Japan experienced it, with dire consequences for their economy. At least, the ordinary Japanese had their savings to fall back on. For many Americans, with their negative savings rate, what can they fall back on? Have they not learned from the mistakes of others in the past?

  6. In the same month, Trichet, the president of EU central bank warned of a coming asset re-pricing (see Prepare for asset repricing, warns Trichet).
  7. Back in November 2006, in How will asset-driven ?growth? eventually harm the economy?, when the global economy was still booming in apparent ‘prosperity’, we quoted the late Ludwig von Mises (the in which the Mises Institute of the libertarian Austrian School of economic thought is named after) and warned that

    That collective error in judgement resulted in the economy misallocating scarce resources into housing sector?in the case of the US, a significant proportion of the jobs created during the asset-driven ?growth? was related (both directly and indirectly) to the housing boom. Since economic resources are always scarce, any misallocation of it implies an opportunity cost on the other sectors of the economy. The result is a structural damage to the economy that can only be corrected through a recession.

    This is the reason why we believe a recession is on its way.

  8. In October 2006, we quoted the late Dr. Kurt Richebächer (an Austrian School economist) and questioned in The Bubble Economy,

    9. These are some of the serious questions we would like to ask:

    1. As the US spends its way into economic ruin, its economy is being damaged structurally. How much longer can the US sustain its colossal debt?
    2. Right now, the US housing bubble is deflating. Will it eventually burst and wreck havoc on the rest of the economy?

Other contrarians who sounded the alarm long ago (and we quoted often) include Marc Faber, Jimmy Rogers, Robert Shiller, Peter Bernstein, Nouriel Roubini and our local Aussie economist, Professor Steve Keen.

Our readers should, by now, appreciate the colossal magnitude of this financial crisis. When you listen the media, the phrase “since the Great Depression” is often mentioned. Make no mistake about this, this has the potential to be worse than the Great Depression (note: we are NOT predicting that it will happen).

The world’s stock market is rallying in the hope that the US government’s plan to nationalise the financial industry will be successful in stopping the core of the rot. New legislations has to be rushed through Congress by the end of next week to change the rules to make the plan legal. As in everything done in haste, we believe there will not be enough thought put into them to understand the long-term ramifications. It is probable that once the changes are in place, they will not be revisited again.

As we warned in Recipe for hyperinflation,

There is no way any politician can sell the message that America needs a severe recession (or even a depression) to cleanse the economy from the gross excesses, imbalances, blunders and mal-investments. Thus, it is very likely that they will have to fight deflation till the very bitter end, till the last drop of blood from their last soldier. Since the current structure of ?rules? will be too restrictive in such a war against deflation, there will be popular momentum towards the bending and rolling back of these ?rules.? If they press on relentlessly till the final end, there can only be one outcome: the US dollar will be joining the long list of failed fiat paper money in the annals of human civilisation.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Looking Forward, Market Observations | 30 Comments »

Understanding the big picture in the inflation-deflation debate

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Right now, there are just too much confusion over the inflation-deflation debate. In fact, this debate is so polarising that many of our readers are thoroughly confused and bewildered by the many millions of conflicting reports, chatter and opinions on the blogs, forums and media. As one of our readers said in Will deflation win?,


I’m getting more and more conflict signals from bases put forward by those who argue for inflation and those who argue for deflation.

So, which will win? Inflation or deflation? Today, we will attempt again to explain the big picture so that you can understand what is going on. As we said before in Failure to understand Black Swan leads to fallacious thinking,

For this reason, that is why we delve more on the big picture and economic history and get mired less on minute statistics and detailed numbers. In technically philosophical terms, it means we are taking on a meta-view i.e. we are taking on a view of our view. At times, this means we have to expand our circle of understanding and venture outside of finance, investing and economics into fields such as psychology, politics and history. The broader our circle of wisdom and experience (that includes borrowed experience from a study of history), the less vulnerable we will be to being caught out like that turkey.

First, let’s take a brief look at the history of money at A brief history of money and its breakdown- Part 1. As that article explained, humanity started off with bartering, which was highly inefficient. Eventually, for whatever reason, the free market chose gold and silver as money. It is interesting to note that gold and silver was the coincidental choice across almost every ancient civilization. In any case, regardless of your view on gold, the point is that in most of the 6000 years worth history of human civilization, money always existed in the form of a physical commodity. That is not to say that monetary inflation cannot happen- ancient Rome debased their own silver coins by diluting the silver with some other less precious metals.

If you think about it, it was un-intuitive for money not to be in the form of a commodity. In one of the movies about Marco Polo, it showed a scene whereby Marco Polo was astonished to see his Chinese slave exchanging goods for pieces of paper:

He ask, “What are you doing??!!!?”

His slave replied, “I am buying something.”

“But money is gold and silver! How can a piece of paper be money?!?!”

If you lived back then, it was obvious why money should not be pieces of paper backed by nothing. Firstly, such money is vulnerable to forgery. Secondly, it can be re-produced at almost no cost. Thirdly, as we said before in Recipe for hyperinflation, the integrity of such money depends on the integrity of the authority that issues it:

To illustrate this point further, imagine you are the only person in town who has the authority to create money out of any piece of paper with your own signature. Wouldn?t this make you a pretty powerful person in town? With such power, you can acquire anything you wish at the expense of others.

Basically, it WAS obvious why paper money, especially the ones backed by nothing but ‘confidence’ and made legal tender by government decree, is not a good form money. Such money is called “fiat money.” The free market, if left to its own devices, will never favour it. But that did not stop ancient governments from dabbling with fiat money. The ancient Chinese was probably the first to try that (see Ancient Chinese fiat paper money) and failed. Today, the entire world is back to using fiat money again (see A brief history of money and its breakdown- Part 2). History shows that there were many attempts to make fiat money work and all of them failed. In other words, excluding the current one, the failure rate of fiat money is 100%.

To make fiat money work even for a time, some kinds of rules or ‘mechanism’ are needed to maintain its integrity (if it can really be achieved indefinitely). As we said before in Recipe for hyperinflation,

Therefore, some kinds of ?rules? are necessary to fetter and curb such vast power. Without these ?rules,? it is impossible to maintain the integrity of money. If money loses its integrity, the financial system and economy will break down and we will be reduced to primitive bartering.

That is why an independent central bank is part of this complex system of ‘mechanism’ (see Why should central banks be independent from the government?).

What are the ‘mechanisms’ that are used?

  1. Commodity backing– Technically, if a paper money is backed by a commodity (i.e. the paper can be redeemed for a commodity), it is not a fiat money. Today’s fiat money was originally warehouse receipts for gold. If too much warehouse receipts are issued than there are gold in the vault, then the issuer has essentially committed fraud and runs the risk of legal/economic repercussions.
  2. Self-expiry– In ancient China, during the Song Dynasty, paper money had a limited life-span, after which it would become no longer be legal tender. As this article from Financial Sense explained,

    The S’ung dynasty was the first to issue true paper money in 1023, and it did so at first cautiously, issuing small amounts, used in a limited area, and good for a specific time period. The notes would be redeemed after three year’s service, to be replaced by new notes for a 3% service charge, a neat way for the government to make money.

    The abuses started immediately. Though the notes were valued at a certain exchange rate for gold, silver, or silk, in practice convertibility was never allowed. Then, the notes were not retired as they printed many more of them. The government made several attempts to support the paper by demanding taxes partly in currency and making other laws, but the damage had been done, and the notes fell out of favour.

    The idea is that at any one time, certain amount of self-expiry money will be retired from circulation and thus, ‘protect’ the integrity of the money. Today, if you look at Zimbabwe’s currency, you will find an expiry date on it.

  3. Credit-system– This is the system used in today’s money (see Are we heading for a deflationary type of recession?). The basic idea is that money is created in the context of credit, which must be returned plus interest.

So, the world’s fiat money system works under the ‘mechanism’ of credit. Because money has to be returned, it acts, in theory, as a check against abuse and rampant monetary inflation. But as we all know from the sub-prime crisis and credit crunch, it got abused to the extreme in practice.

The fact that the global financial system is facing acute deflation threat shows that this credit-system ‘mechanism’ is working to protect the integrity of fiat money! From that perspective, we can see why the US dollar is appreciating in the context of deflation. But at the same time, if the integrity of money is to be protected, then all these years of credit abuse will come home to roost in a colossal economic pain for the masses.

The issue is, do the masses want to avoid great financial pain or does it want to maintain the integrity of fiat money? Reality dictates that it can only choose one but not both. If they choose the former, the only way to do that will be to repeal the credit-system ‘mechanism,’ which will mean the loss of integrity for the current fiat monetary system. Such loss of integirty will manifest itself in the form of hyperinflation.

In summary, whether you believe the end game is deflation or inflation will depend on your faith in human nature.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Economics/Finance, Gold, History, Looking Forward, Silver | 40 Comments »

Have we escaped from the dangers of inflation?

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Today, the global spigot of liquidity (see Liquidity?Global Markets Face `Severe Correction,? Faber Says on the concept of ?liquidity?) is wide open, spewing out huge amounts of money and money substitutes into the financial system. The growth of money supply of major economies is estimated around or above 10% per annum, with China having the dubious ?honour? of being near the top at 18% (see Why is China printing so much money?). The top ?honour? goes to Russia, with their M2 money supply rising a whopping 48.8% from the beginning of 2006 to beginning of 2007 (see the figures at the Russia Central Bank web site here).

With all these flood of fiat money inundating the global financial system, we look at all these skyrocketing financial asset prices with a yawn. Price bubbles of all sorts are found everywhere in the world?from Chinese stocks, junk bonds to private equity booms. Back here in Australia, it looks to us that nowadays, everyone is ?playing? the stock market, many using leverages like CFDs and margin lending. We hear stories of novices ?investors? opening a trading account to ?learn? how to trade. The logic is simple: central banks around the world are hard at work ?printing? money. These monies first go to the financial system, creating price bubbles. The bubbles then attract speculators, gamblers and punters into the asset markets the way bees get attracted to honey. Soon, word get round to the masses and they want a slice of the action too.

Let us tell you a ?secret:? do you know that Zimbabwe?s stock market is now booming too? Do you know why? The reason is not because Zimbabwe is getting richer, but because its currency is becoming worthless with hyperinflation (see Zimbabwe: Living with hyperinflation). As we said back in October last year in Divergent sentiment, ?you can make the Dow Jones climb as high as you want as long as you print enough money.? That is what is happening in Zimbabwe.

As we said before in Example of inevitable effect of monetary inflation, we are very sure that as all these liquidity work its way to the rest of the real economy, it will only be a matter of time before price inflation will show its ugly head. Yet we are simply amazed with Wall Street?s obliviousness to this danger and Ben Bernanke?s incredibly sugar-coated words in his recent economic report to Congress. Can we rely on the Chinese to forever keep the price of importable things down to save us from inflation? We very much doubt so?they have their own inflation problem to handle (see Cause of inflation: Shanghai bubble case study).

The root of the hell of price inflation is fiat currency. Make no mistake about this: in all of human history since the beginning of time, there has never been a time when fiat currencies did not become worthless eventually. For example, the ancient Chinese, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), had tried it before, even using self-expiring fiat money in an attempt to prevent inflation. The Mongols? use of fiat money to fund their occupation of China was eventually ended by the subsequent Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Today?s current fiat money experiment only began in 1971 (see A brief history of money and its breakdown- Part 2). How much longer can it last? We do not know but we hazard a guess that it is very much possible for us to see that day in our lifetime.

One final word: fiat money is only as stable as the government that enforce it, and only as safe as the stringency and integrity of the central banks who create it. Gold, on the other hand, yield to neither control nor will of any government.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Economics/Finance, Gold, Looking Forward | No Comments »

Entrenched perception on the value of paper money

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Not long ago, we advised someone to buy gold as a hedge against inflation. That person?s reaction was, ?But gold prices had already doubled from a few years ago!?

As we think about that person?s reaction, we realised that people?s perception on the value of gold had changed immensely over the course of centuries. Two hundred years ago, people would rather trust gold much more than paper money. After all, paper money were just warehouse receipts for gold, which may well be forged or quantitatively inflated (this is, strictly speaking, fraud). Gold, on the other hand, had been selected by the free market over the course of centuries as the most reliable medium of money. It was considered far more reliable than paper because there was (and is) no way for anyone to easily inflate the supply of it at will (other than mining for it, which require significant time and effort).

Today, people?s entrenched perceptions are completely different. Somehow, by some strange reason, paper currency (with today?s technology, they can exist in the form of digital information) is mistakenly seen to be the more reliable store of value. It has come to the point that even the value of gold is measured in terms of paper currency. As we said before in How is inflation sabotaging our ability to measure the value of things?, how can we measure the value of something by using a yardstick that is as elastic as paper currency?

Now, since the gold prices had doubled from a few years ago, will it be subjected to the law of gravity and return to where it was? There is nothing to prevent gold from obeying (or disobeying) this ?law? but fundamentally, if this ever happen, the market will be behaving even more irrationally that it is right now. Think about it: if the quantity of paper currency (including credit, money substitutes, deposits, etc) is growing at a rate that far outstrips the rate of increase in the quantity of gold by a colossal margin, then the fundamental value of paper money relative to gold has to continue to fall significantly. Today, gold prices still far undervalue the fundamental worth of gold.

If we consider the way central banks around the world are grossly inflating the supply of paper currencies, we cannot help but feel that it is more risky to hold cash in the long run.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economics/Finance, Gold | No Comments »

How to secretly rob the people with monetary inflation?

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Quite some time ago, we had learnt that Alan Greenspan, the former US head of the Federal Reserve, had a sign at his desk that said, ?The Buck Starts Here.? While we are not sure of the truth to this, we know that at the very least, the statement itself is true (and funny as well)?the Federal Reserve has the power to create US dollars out of thin air. Since the world is running on fiat currency system, this arrangement is an accepted order of things globally. While we are not pointing a finger at anyone, we cannot help but feel disturbed by the ethical implication of this arrangement.

Suppose someone of great counterfeiting skill forged a million dollars. Who is the first to benefit? Obviously the forger because he can now spend the fake money on whatever he likes. The shopkeeper who receives the forger?s fake money will benefit next as his income increases. As the fake money spread throughout the economy, the money will pass from hand to hand in the forms of incomes and expenditures, raising the prices of goods and services along the way. Who will suffer most? The last person who receives the fake money because by the time he does so, price would have already risen.

Now, let us look at the situation in Shanghai as an example?see our previous article, Cause of inflation: Shanghai bubble case study. (Please note that we are not pointing a finger at the Chinese authorities?this is a universal problem that applies to every country in the world.) Clearly, there are some people who unfairly benefit and some who loses out. When central banks print money, the commercial banks are usually the first in the queue to receive them. The next to receive the money will be the companies and businesses that receive the money in the form of loans through the fractional reserve banking system. As that money made its way into the various classes of assets (e.g. properties and stocks), there will be some who strike it ?rich? as they sell their assets at inflated prices. As we said before in Speculative fervour in the Chinese stock market, the proliferation of ?success? stories of those who achieve their wealth through their ?investment? is testament to this phenomenon. Those who ?made? money will no doubt spend them, thus adding to the aggregate demand of the economy and bidding up prices. The end result is price inflation. Who are the last ones who will receive the money? The common people on fixed salaries and who do not own any ?assets? will have to bear the brunt of price inflation. In Shanghai, the rural migrants are one of the most susceptible groups. What is the end result of this? A redistribution of wealth from the last ones in the queue to the first one in the queue! Usually, the latecomers are the most vulnerable members of society.

Thus, monetary inflation always brings about false illusions of prosperity in the beginning. In reality, if left unchecked and unrectified, will be harmful to society in the end.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economics/Finance | 8 Comments »