Thursday, July 23, 2009

Deflation is Depressing

Is deflation always bad? Some industries exhibit falling prices which are beneficial to consumers, so if deflation leads to most falling that should be good as well, right? No. Deflation leads to a riskless real return on money. This is bad for the economy as any investment that returns less than that, or even more than that but carries some risk is not made, and growth slows to reduce that return to zero. Falling prices lead to delayed sales and raises real debt burdens slowing the economy further and leading to more deflation. The economy has difficulty adjusting to deflation due to the lack of expectations and sticky prices, creating a vicious cycle. In a perfect world with known expectations and all planning, contracts, and prices adjusted seamlessly, deflation would not present a problem, but in such a world neither would it be necessary, and as prices must respond to supply and demand rather than uniformly, resistance and stickiness would remain. In the end, deflation is depressing.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Unbelievable

A really nice paper on the unsustainability of the bubble is this 2006 paper by Robert Parenteau, US Household Deficit Spending. We were well into Minsky's ponzi finance regime where debt is acquired to pay off previous debt leading to a debt trap. Even if income increased with productivity, it could not sustain debt rising with asset values. Finance wasn't growing with the economy, it was the growth of the economy, it was growing at the expense of the economy. This is why it is so unbelievable so many failed to see it coming. They had to close their eyes really tightly.