Skip to main content

Money and prediction of Demand for money

Consider the role of money first. Ask non-economists, “What is economics?” and they will often reply that it is “all about money”. Yet the odd thing is that the standard academic models used by most economists ignore money altogether. Inflation instead depends simply on the amount of spare capacity in the economy.

Nor does the money supply play any role in monetary policy in most countries, notably America. Alan Greenspan's last ten speeches as chairman of the Federal Reserve contained not a single use of the word “money”.

Yet Milton Friedman's dictum that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” is still borne out by the facts. The chart plots the rate of inflation and broad money-supply growth in 40 economies over the past 30 years. In the long run, countries with faster monetary growth have experienced higher inflation. So why are central banks (except the ECB) paying so little attention to money?

The problem is that over short periods the link between the money supply and inflation is fickle, because the demand for money moves unpredictably. The Bank of England's early days provide a good example. Uncertainty over exactly when ships laden with valuable commodities would arrive in London could cause unexpected shifts in the demand for money and credit. The uncertainty was caused by many factors, notably changes in the direction and the speed of the wind as ships came up the river Thames. The bank's Court Room therefore had a weather vane (still there today) to provide a surprisingly accurate prediction of shifts in the demand for money. Sadly, no such gauge exists today. Financial liberalisation and innovation have also distorted measures of money, making monetary targeting—all the rage in the early 1980s—unworkable.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5662647

:) Falkor

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cognitive rules of business presentations

In his recent book, Clear and to the Point, Kosslyn explained that the four rules of PowerPoint are: The Goldilocks Rule, The Rudolph Rule, The Rule of Four, and the Birds of a Feather Rule. Here's how they work. The Goldilocks Rule refers to presenting the "just right" amount of data. Never include more information than your audience needs in a visual image. As an example, Kosslyn showed two graphs of real estate prices over time. One included ten different numbers, one for each year. The other included two numbers: a peak price, and the current price. For the purposes of a presentation about today's prices relative to peak price, those numbers were the only ones necessary. The Rudolph Rule refers to simple ways you can make information stand out and guide your audience to important details -- the way Rudolph the reindeer's red nose stood out from the other reindeers' and led them. If you're presenting a piece of relevant data in a list, why not mak...
Post a Comment
Read more

Value of dollar - Part 1

A Simple Perspective Will Do The date is 2000-05-28. Don't you get tired of all the bad news bears reminding you of all these instabilities, excesses, and 'potential' tensions in the global economy? After all, hasn't it always been like that? Yes it has, but not in money it hasn't. Increasingly, investors find it harder to know where to put their savings. What about Government Bonds? Wrong. Their recent record of capital losses have wiped out your guaranteed yields, probably because the stock market keeps crowding them out, and this even in a strong dollar and low inflation environment. Furthermore, there is no reliable liquidity and potentially poor quality debt in the corporate sector. Foreign assets? Wrong. Most of the world's economies are riskier, have been under performing, and also, there is this thing called currency risk. Like how is the average person gonna cope with currency...
Post a Comment
Read more

Depreciation of British Pound 1900-2000

When the Bank of England was formed the powers to create money was finally transferred to private hands. The creation of Fed in US, was just a part of this cycle. Though it is a common knowledge US Dollar has depreciated nearly 100% since the creation of Federal Reserve, the same is the case of all the currencies across the globe. For example, below is the UK Parliament data that highlights the depreciating value of Pound.
2 comments
Read more