Piling on more debt today, just to keep the economy afloat, will lead to decades of slow growth and potential disinflation. The Fed is not able to sustainably lift growth or inflation. Hoisington Management economist Lacy Hunt’s recent Bloomberg interview is worth the read at this link. Here’s a taste:
When the Fed initiated QE1, QE2 and QE3, folks said those policies were very inflationary. There is a liquidity effect of what the Fed is doing, and the liquidity effect can be very powerful over the short term. But ultimately the increase in the money supply did not follow through after the rounds of Fed purchases of government securities because the banks couldn’t utilize the reserves, they didn’t have the capital base to make the loans, they had to charge a risk premium in an environment in which the risk premium was rising very dramatically and the borrowers couldn’t pay the risk premium. There was no secondary follow-through in terms of money supply growth, and the velocity of money fell and the growth rate fell back after a transitory rise. And I don’t really see this as any different.
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