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Onion Talks: Your Brain-Gun: Turn the Safety Off

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lostlakehiker1/05/2013 10:29:18 pm PST

re: #60 freetoken

Bubble, or a peak into the future?

Iowa Farmland Surges 24% Versus Year Ago

I wonder about what kind of inflation is coming at us - something predictable or something uglier. We live in strange times, when official “cost of living” wage rates are zero or near so, but when other parts of our economy can undergo radical price increases.

Be careful what you say. Muttering about inflation is the sign of a wingnut.

There has been a stunning increase in the official measures of the money supply. On its face, that should have produced a sharp burst of inflation. But.

Money isn’t what it used to be. For all practical purposes, a credit card limit that people treat as a bank balance amounts to money, at least for a while. It works as if it were money, enabling spending. Likewise with many other forms of credit.

After the crash, people began to pay down credit balances. That has destroyed a lot of pseudo-money, somewhat balancing the increase in the official money supply. Or at least, that’s my theory.

If true, this opens the door to inflation if and when credit flows more liberally, but until then, we won’t get our inflation until yet another burst of money issuing rolls around.

As it must, if the deficit remains anything like it has been. So far, the president has not proposed any measures that would meaningfully rein it in. The Republicans in Congress have vowed to fight any tax increases on the middle class, and without that, nothing short of politically unthinkable cuts to social security, the military, etc. could close the gap.