The Money Supply Growth that Isn’t

Bob McTeer debunks the inflation fears of fever-swamp Austrians:

What am I missing? I keep hearing people on financial TV say things like “The Fed keeps pumping out the dollars,” “The Fed keeps monetizing the debt.”

Then I go look up money-growth charts. I can’t find all this excessive money creation that is monetizing the debt and is about to create a breakout in inflation. Not M1; not M2…

To repeat the obvious, because others won’t, money growth is almost flat. Flat money growth does not cause inflation—especially when we have enormous slack in the economy along with rapid productivity growth and declining unit labor cost. We may get inflation in the next few years, but, if so, it will be based on money growth yet to happen. It hasn’t happened yet.

posted on 19 May 2010 by skirchner in Economics, Financial Markets, Monetary Policy

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