Firecracker

Totally understandable! hah I did like three loops through the different definitions to straighten myself out before I got the confidence to reply back. Tricky and inconsistent definitions indeed.

I'd also like to celebrate that we can have learning exchanges like this on HN! That's awesome. Thanks for all the great things you've brought to the conversation rojeee!

Plus, nothing like that with a dose of zero-indexed irony :) Looks like CS isn't alone in the zero-indexed world.

Looks like the bitcoin comment got killed, but I want to revive an interesting point at the heart of it:

Big monetary swings like this do bolster the case for it as an inflation-resistant value store...like gold (or stocks), both of which have risen quite a bit this year.

Great question! It does indeed.

If you want to see, can click the gear in the upper right on the site. Then format. Then check the log box. No URL scheme, unfortunately, or I'd link it for ya.

Three reasons often given:

(1) Gives an incentive to deploy money. "Use it or lose it." This stimulates investment and consumption.

(2) Some prices are "sticky down," like wages; people respond much better to nominal wage increases than pay cuts. Inflation lets these prices be adjusted down more easily if needs be.

(3) Stealth tax, not only on the holders of dollar-denominated wealth but also because inflation (a) pushes people into higher tax brackets and (b) creates more taxable "capital gains". If you're a politician, it's nice to be able to pass repeated tax cuts, even as government expenditures continue to grow as a fraction of GDP.

All that said, relatively stable price levels are important. Without them, contracts get tricky, particularly around inventory or agreements into the future.

Absolutely! Countering the deflationary pressures to keep price levels stable (and fixed contracts reasonable), would be another way of looking at it, I think. They're doing their job!

The question is, politically, can they be so responsible in contracting the money supply thereafter? Hopefully!

Doesn't M1 exclude bank reserves?

Edit: Indeed. M1's definition: "M1 includes funds that are readily accessible for spending. M1 consists of: (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) traveler's checks of nonbank issuers; (3) demand deposits; and (4) other checkable deposits (OCDs), which consist primarily of negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts at depository institutions and credit union share draft accounts. Seasonally adjusted M1 is calculated by summing currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits, and OCDs, each seasonally adjusted separately.

I agree with this line of argument for the 2008 era quantitative easing! But my read is that M1 explicitly excludes bank reserves, so the M1 created can't be locked-up reserves, right?

Hey HN Friends,

I'm posting this because I was shocked when I saw this graph. I hadn't previously appreciated just how much of an unprecedented explosion in the money supply there'd been this year.

In particular, it seems to quantify a lot of potential for long run inflation and a very expansionary monetary policy move required to prop up the economy during the pandemic. But I'm not an expert here; I'm hoping we can put our heads together. I'd be very curious to hear general discussion and insights into the dynamics. Let's go, community of systems thinkers :)

While the M1 measure of money shows the change most dramatically, other ways of looking at the same data (dollars printed, M2, MZM, etc.) seem to tell the same story. There have also been some news articles written, but I thought that for HN, we'd go directly to the numbers.

Thanks for taking a look!