Saving Banks

[Jon Miller]

Thanks jaguar.

JM

[Fake Boris]

I don't quite understand what the practical solution is in Jaguar's post.

[Aeson]

I don't quite understand what the practical solution is in Jaguar's post.

Making a commitment/guarantee to increase the money supply. (I just skimmed it, not sure if he stated how exactly.)

[Jaguar]

Making a commitment/guarantee to increase the money supply. (I just skimmed it, not sure if he stated how exactly.)

Close. A commitment to increase inflation and nominal GDP, backed by their infinite ability to increase the money supply.

The peculiarity, though, is that once you make a commitment like that, the private sector actually does the work for you.

[Fake Boris]

And by that you mean that bad mortgages would have been detoxified?

Wouldn't this have threatened the USD' status as a reserve currency?

[Jaguar]

Here's the easiest example of what a determined Central Bank can do in terms of getting the private sector to bend to its will.

Suppose that the European Central Bank says "no matter what, we will not let Spanish bonds exceed an interest rate of five percent. We are prepared to buy Spanish bonds at unlimited quantities at that interest rate." When it frames a statement that way, Spanish bond interest rates immediately shift. You'd have to be stupid to sell a Spanish bond for some higher interest rate, because someone could buy it from you and sell it directly to the ECB and make a profit at your expense.

[Jaguar]

And by that you mean that bad mortgages would have been detoxified?

Wouldn't this have threatened the USD' status as a reserve currency?

It would lower the value of individual dollars. It wouldn't change the dollar's usefulness as a medium of exchange in international markets.

[Fake Boris]

You obviously know more about economics than I do, but imagine you're Canadian; what is your opinion of USD investments after something like this? We're talking about an economy that depends on imports for daily consumption...

[Jaguar]

You obviously know more about economics than I do, but imagine you're Canadian; what is your opinion of USD investments after something like this? We're talking about an economy that depends on imports for daily consumption...

Investments in stocks and so forth are protected from inflation. When you own Microsoft stock, you literally own a piece of the company - not a bunch of dollars. Stock prices are heavily correlated with 10-year inflation expectations during this recession because the nominal economy is so far off track that even a small change in inflation produces huge (much larger than the inflation) changes in stock returns.

[Fake Boris]

Yes.

I was thinking about the following:

oil prices
demand deposits (that give US investments an inherent advantage)

I have no idea if the effect would be important or not.

[Jaguar]

It raises oil prices. Of course, it raises nominal income as well.

Inflation is bad for people holding cash or cash-like instruments. It pushes them towards equities (stocks), which encourages capital formation (jobs!) at the margin.

[Kuciwalker]

Note that in extreme cases (e.g. now) even people holding cash-like instruments (bonds) can be better off with inflation because even as it reduces the purchasing power of the money those bonds will pay out, it reduces the chance the borrower will default. (For example, imagine you owned Spanish bonds. A more inflationary policy from the ECB would have a strong positive effect on the Spanish economy and tax revenues.)

[Kuciwalker]

A further note: poor people have more of their savings in bank deposits, which will be hurt by inflation, but their savings will generally be small compared to their wages - so inflation is good for them too. Especially if they're in debt.

[Dinner]

I believe Canada didn't have a huge banking crisis like we did so I say we copy Canada's banking rules and call it a day.

[Tupac Shakur]

If Canada didn't have a crisis, how the **** is copying their policies going to fix our crisis?