Quote from Cutten:
Lol.
To the "quantitative easing" crowd, I should also point out that the "Helicopter" approach has already been tried numerous times e.g.
Weimar Germany in the 1920s
Zimbabwe in the 2000s
Most of Latin America in the 80s and early 90s
Hungary 1946
Needless to say, those episodes didn't work out too well. Seriously, if inflation alone was enough to avoid a severe recession, why wouldn't governments simply add 50% to the money supply overnight to combat it? If extreme money printing really worked, respectable central banks would *actually do it*.
If governments could stop recessions, they would. They don't, therefore they can't.
Professing that money printing is dilution is child's play. Let's advance the argument in complexity.
I'm all for quant easing, but it needs to be accompanied by the proper policy to enable us flexibility to reduce money supply when inflation gets out of hand.
ie, With debt, if we decided to fund the creation of 200 nuke plants and an all electric car infrastructure over the next 5 years, this very deflationary force (on energy prices, food, etc.) would ramp up disposable income greatly. Our trade deficits would repair somewhat, and our military action would not be dependent on who controls oil. The whole game changes and we'd have the flexibility to mop up all of this extra money going forward. Cheaper energy would fuel more growth and increased productivity and wealth ...
Borrow to invest when no one else is willing to do it because barrier to entry is too high. That's my real driving idea. The reality is that our energy policy/etc will not be aggressive enough. Obama's job should be to devalue all fossil fuel energy sources ... too bad the lobby against this is too strong.
My earlier point was simple, though - that deflation and inflation are both very easy trends to fix technically. They are just both politically and economically painful when done in an aggressive manner that incorrectly quantifies the impact of such stimulus, since dislocations are inevitable from such broad movements.
If Japan had printed and stimulated properly, their stock market while in real terms may be lower today, would likely in nominal terms been far above. And that is what I am addressing here.
If the problem is a 'tapped consumer' which everyone here is so obsessed with (rightfully so, since ET is a breeding ground for unemployed disfunctionals who are running out of cash), then fixing their debt problem by printing money, while inflationary and in actuality just a wealth transfer (does not create wealth), may solve the 'tapped consumer' problem.
If you like US cash and don't like what I'm saying, adapt and buy some assets..
Reiterating.. If you combine something very inflationary (money printing) with something very deflationary (giant productivity increase via relatively free energy), you are left with a lot more buying power in all of our hands, since with an even larger supply of dollars, each dollar can buy the same or more goods in real terms than before.
Not to mention in the process, the stimulus provides job opportunities.
Something like this would naturally recover real estate as well, since with many commodities no longer an effective inflation hedge (ie buying oil won't protect you from policy like this), money would naturally flow into what would become in short supply: land and homes.