The Great Depression would have been worse without its only saving grace: all goods were cheaper than before. The major mistake of Hoover and FDR was in thinking that low prices were somehow the cause of the Depression rather than the effect.
The very existence of a centrally planned apparatus changes the real economic data, and so changes what the "correct" number of cars should have been, even if we could agree on the criteria for correctness.
The increase in monetary pumping however sets in motion a new boom-bust cycle. Also, once economic activity starts to recover on its own (as a result of the improvement in the pool of real funding) any "help" from the Fed can only slow down the process of recovery.
Thus, to say it all in one sentence, the threat of massive deflation can be eliminated, the threat of inflation ended, and the actual and potential domain of economic freedom greatly expanded, for $11 billion — an $11 billion that would not even be an out-of-pocket expense to anyone but merely a balance-sheet charge on the books of the Federal Reserve System when it deducted its gold holding from its balance sheet and added it to the balance sheets of the banks.
We define a bubble as the outcome of activities that have emerged on the back of loose monetary policy of the central bank.
If a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds. Inflation is a policy that cannot last.
According to my reckoning, between the close of business Thursday and Tuesday, the Fed’s extra $352 billion in liquidity enhancing measures b
Inflation, to sum up, is the increase in the volume of money and bank credit in relation to the volume of goods. It is harmful because it depreciates the value of the monetary unit, raises everybody's cost of living, imposes what is in effect a tax on the poorest (without exemptions) at as high a rate as the tax on the richest, wipes out the value of past savings, discourages future savings, redistributes wealth and income wantonly, encourages and rewards speculation and gambling at the expense of thrift and work, undermines confidence in the justice of a free enterprise system, and corrupts public and private morals.
