Money printing and inflation.

in economy •  7 months ago 

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On the one hand, it's cool that we get to say "I told you so", so often. It's a string of constant validation.

On the other hand, being right when it's predicting awful things means awful things happen, and nobody seems to listen the next time either.

I wish we were wrong more often, honestly.

I don't agree with Friedman that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon", if what one means by inflation is rising prices or rising prices on a wide range of products.

Supply chain disruptions caused more than their fair share here. Like... $6 trillion dollars in a really short time obviously had an effect. Essentially shutting down most worldwide commerce, not just trade but innumerable businesses overall, obviously had an effect.

These were both huge disruptions to prices, and both contributed bigly to inflation. Hell... It's hard to even fathom how disruptive both ends were on their own, and piecing out what percent of inflation was due to each in any precise way is difficult and probably impossible. And they mutually reinforced each other in a lot of ways, as new dollars allowed for longer shutdowns and shutdowns required more printing... Neither would have been as large as they were without the aid of the other.

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