The Merits of Inflation

Title:
The Merits of Inflation
Word Count:
1658
Summary:
In a series of speeches designed to defend his record, Alan Greenspan, until recently an icon

Keywords:

Article Body:
In a series of speeches designed to defend his record, Alan Greenspan, until recently an icon

Greenspan and his ilk seem to be fighting yesteryear’s war against a long-slain monster. The o

As economists are wont to point out time and again, inflation is not the inevitable outcome of

Indeed, it is arguable whether inflation was subdued - in America as elsewhere - by the farsig

Quoted by "The Economist", Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein noted that America’s industry is alr

Depending on one’s point of view, this is a self-reinforcing virtuous - or vicious cycle. Cons


Should the USA reflate its way out of either an impending double dip recession or deflationary
It is universally accepted that inflation leads to the misallocation of economic resources by

They postpone investments - or over-invest and embark on preemptive buying sprees. As Erica Gr
Still, the late preeminent economist James Tobin went as far as calling inflation "the grease

These disparities among essentially similar economies reflect pervasive disagreements over wha

The sin committed by most central banks is their lack of symmetry. They signal visceral aversi

Inflation rates - as measured by price indices - fail to capture important economic realities.

Current inflation measures neglect to take into account whole classes of prices - for instance
Consider a deflationary environment in which stagnant wages and zero interest rates can still

The methodology of computing inflation obscures many of the "quantum effects" in the borderlin

Workers may agree to a 2 percent pay rise in an economy with 3 percent inflation. They are unl


Economists in a November 2000 conference organized by the ECB argued that a continent-wide inf

The new consensus is that the price for a substantial decrease in unemployment need not be a s

Vanishingly low inflation - bordering on deflation - also results in a "liquidity trap". The n
This has been the case in Japan in the last few years and is now emerging as a problem in the
This may have led to the sharp devaluation of the yen in recent months. Inflation is exported

But the upshots of inflation are fiscal, not merely monetary. In countries devoid of inflation

Thus inflation increases the state’s revenues while eroding the real value of its debts, oblig

The outcomes of inflation, ironically, resemble the economic recipe of the "Washington consens
Inflation also improves the lot of corporate - and individual - borrowers by increasing their

The connection between inflation and asset bubbles is unclear. On the one hand, some of the gr

Still, the absolute level of inflation may be less important than its volatility. Inflation ta

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