Quote from Ed Breen:
Most people don't notice but the current level of Fed earnings that are turned over to the Treasury ($85B in 2012) is equal to the Sequestration issue. It is greater than the revenue projected from the last tax increase. If you compare this Fed revenue to other sources of revenue you will see that it is about half the revenue raised from corporate income taxes...and yet it gets no mention.
The problem with this revenue is that properly understood it is a transfer of income from the aggregate banking system to the Fed. To the extent that the Fed is earning more, the aggregate private banking system is swapping higher earning assets (Treasuries and RMBS) for lower earning assets (non interest bearing demand notes [a.k.a. 'Dollars'] invested as excess reserves at .25%. So, income that would be in aggregate bank operating earnings...contributing to bank's 'net interest margin' is now flowing to the Fed, which inturn, buy law, pays it to the Treasury. This is not good for banks.
The reason there is no inflation is that this money does not enter the real economy in any way that drives increased collateral asset values and general prices. Properly understood inflation is driven by increased private credit formation in dynamic relationship with increasing leverage on collateral assets. In an inflation capital flows from liquid positions and financial asset investments into tangible assets as credit expands and leverage ratios are increased. This is caused by a fiscal context that encourages investment in assets. The present fiscal context in the U.S. threatens to confiscate future profits from investment and has presently raised taxes on investment. This repressive fiscal context discourages credit expansion at the same time the Fed is trying to drive credit expansion by creating base money. The Fed has discovered that increasing the supply of money and reducing the cost of money cannot drive private credit formation in a context of a repressive fiscal context that reduces profit and increases risk for asset investors.
So, all the new money has no place to go...it moves into liquid holding spots, deposits that increase required reserves, and into excess reserves...and into government lending...but private credit formation that drives inflation (aggregate private credit expansion is the definition of 'velocity') is still in contraction ...though the rate of contraction is slowing and some parts of private business credit are showing signs of a bottom and possible expansion.