3min chapter

The Great Antidote cover image

Thomas Hoenig on Inflation and the Federal Reserve

The Great Antidote

CHAPTER

Why We're Only Getting Inflation Now?

The has had this policy of easy money for so long, and when the fed for the past decade or so was saying that they were having a hard time getting enough inflation into the economy. Can you explain why we're only getting inflation now? Well, higher rates of inflation is very serious. So wen the money was coming in the economy a now the first wall, we had more we had a global economy. There was new labor coming into the market. But over that period, we had inflation. We had house price inflation from 20 12 to 20 20. That was double diget in many cases. And what you're doing is your leveraging up the economy through these financial assets and

00:00
Speaker 1
Can
Speaker 2
you explain why we're only getting inflation now? Well, higher rates of inflation, when the has had this policy of easy money for so long, and when the fed for the past decade or so was saying that they were having a hard time getting enough inflation into the economy, whatever that means.
Speaker 1
Well, i think first of all, they ha they have had inflation from almost the start of the of the policy. And i call it acid inflation, which is very serious. So so wen the money was coming in the economy a now the first wall, we had more we had a global economy. There was new labor coming into the market. So for a period of time, there was a very, very sustained increase in supply, that of goods and services that helped contain that. But over that period, we had inflation. We had house we had house price inflation from 20 12 to 20 20. That was double diget in many cases. We had so that money that was coming in into the financial sector, right? They were providing this money into the financial sector, was a being used to theincrease acid values and the stock market. And to give me an example, perhaps not a particularly good example, but it's the fact that you you put all this money out there, ah, if you did a e stock buy back, and this was bed in m chrislir's book, but i'll simplify it, and you are a you have assets, and you borrow against those assets as a manager of that company. So you have a hundred dollars of assets, a hundred dollars of equity, and you're producing a good that provides ability to pay that dividend to the investor. And then you learn that we wait a mint. I can borrow for virtually nothing, two %, less angeles stampan of four % on my or five % on my stock. Well, i can borrow that money. I can buy back my stock and raise its price ad and pay, and pay two % for the borrowings that i used to buy back that stock and reduce my cost of of my debt and my capital. But nd and byrit and raise the price stock, raised my return on equity. But i haven't produced another thing. I haven't produced anything new. I haven'ti don't need th investing new capital. I don't invest a new employment. So what you're doing is your leveraging up the economy through these financial assets and through this very low rate environment that t had created over a period of time. And that that creates leverage, an realicates wealth, but it doesn't produce real improvements in the productivity or the real asset in your economy. And that's what yu it takes time for that to work through the economy in terms of seeing the distortions that occurs with lower productivity, which happen during the decade between 20 ten and 20 20, 18.

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