A Quote by Jerome Powell

Below-target inflation increases the real value of debts owed by households and businesses and reduces the ability of central banks to respond to downturns. — © Jerome Powell
Below-target inflation increases the real value of debts owed by households and businesses and reduces the ability of central banks to respond to downturns.
Massive debts owed to foreign creditors weaken our global influence and threaten high inflation and steep tax increases for our children and grandchildren.
Banks hold deposits and savings entrusted to them by individuals, by businesses, by governments and by central banks. They put that money to work, helping people to buy homes, for example, or lending to businesses to invest in expansion.
Central banks are choosing to increase their gold holdings as a percentage of total reserves. They obviously think there is a reason to do that. It doesn't make sense to back up one currency with a hoard of other paper currencies. There needs to be a real anchor there. I think that central banks are well behind the curve. If you look at the percentage of above-ground gold controlled by central banks, it's historically low. Hence the fact that central banks are trying to increase their holdings. They've got a long way to go to get where they need to be.
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with 'free banking.' The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.
After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.
The only way to ensure that inflation expectations remain safely anchored near the FOMC's target is to keep inflation close to that target on a consistent basis.
After adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 5% of households grew by 38% from 1989 to 2013. ?By comparison, the average real income of the other 95% of households grew less than 10%.
After adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 5% of households grew by 38% from 1989 to 2013. By comparison, the average real income of the other 95% of households grew less than 10%.
So: if the chronic inflation undergone by Americans, and in almost every other country, is caused by the continuing creation of new money, and if in each country its governmental "Central Bank" (in the United States, the Federal Reserve) is the sole monopoly source and creator of all money, who then is responsible for the blight of inflation? Who except the very institution that is solely empowered to create money, that is, the Fed (and the Bank of England, and the Bank of Italy, and other central banks) itself?
During the Greenspan-Bernanke era, the Fed has embraced the view that stability in the economy and stability in prices are mutually consistent. As long as inflation remains at or below its target level, the Fed's modus operandi is to panic at the sight of real or perceived economic trouble and provide emergency relief.
Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.
I have never believed that central banks should have rigid inflation targeting. That is not a good thing to stabilize. There is nothing in economic theory to back this.
Most of these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary. There's no real cost behind them. There's no real value behind them. So, they're what the classical economist called empty pricing. Prices with no real cost value. What they called rent and fictitious capital. Capital claims on junk mortgage borrowers. The pretense is that all these debts can be paid but it's all fictitious, because everybody knows - at least on Wall Street everybody knows - that many debts can't be paid.
When you have steady inflows and global central banks hell-bent on stoking credit activity and inflation, money will flow into the most attractive areas.
The unique aspect of today's monetary inflation is that it is not limited to one country, but a host of countries are all inflating together. As a result of the monetary inflation (when all of the newly created money begins to leave the banks and enter the system), the price inflation will be worldwide.
To me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.
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