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The Conventional Wisdom never actually talks about the Japanese Bubble in detail - much as Serious People are already learning now to talk about the deficit and ignore the bubble that precipitated the latest crisis.
One thing that is clear to me from a number of ET discussions that doesn't seem to have made much mileage elsewhere (except Naked Capitalism some days) is that a number of things interacted:
The effect was that far more than ever in the past, money creation was in the hands of the banks and other private financial institutions. For them, increasing the money supply led to more deals they could skim transaction fees from...
Of course, one can't ignore the Greenspan put, etc. but your diary suggests to me that a critical part of making such a massive bubble was the move of the control money creation into the private sector, using instruments that did not show up under many of the conventional measures of money supply. Thus the parallels between your memory of the Japan crisis and the latest crisis are rather strong.
At the same time, the decision to abandon measures which did highlight some of what was going on was just insane... who knows if that was malice or incompetence...
the decision to abandon measures which did highlight some of what was going on was just insane... who knows if that was malice or incompetence...
who knows if that was malice or incompetence...
The two are not mutually exclusive. The Cheney administration proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. We all bleed the same color.
You keep referring to the comments to my diary The M3 money supply: much ado about nothing? from October 7th, 2007. The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter
time flies.
I think it's important, but I don't have a proper theory - just the same hunch. It all ties together, but M3 is just a marker, the important bit is the belief that wage inflation matters, but asset inflation does not...
But for consumers, there's very little practical difference between wage inflation and asset inflation. If I'm in the middle of a housing bubble and spending 60% of my income on a mortage or on rent because I have no choice, the real cost of everything else might as well have increased.
In contradiction to the theory, I'd suggest that the real determinant of inflation is the balance between discretionary or forced spending. The ticket price of individual items is a secondary factor.
If I'm forced to spend an amount on X, that means I no longer have the choice to spend it on Y, and I'm effectively impoverished in real terms, in almost exactly the same way as I would be a by a tax increase.
Wage inflation can have the same effect if it's systemic - but currently corporations have plenty of scope for raising wages without increasing prices, so that hardly applies.
Well, considering that stock market indices are indices of asset price level and the attention the serious people pay to them as indicators of economic health... I think you may be onto something. The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter
But for consumers, there's very little practical difference between wage inflation and asset inflation.
The most important function of asset prices is for valuing the assets as collateral for debt. Owners don't benefit from the income they can earn so much as from the leverage they can put on their assets. Add limited liability and you're set. The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter
They can compensate for wage inflation by attempting to increase their wages. Wage control rhetoric is structured to make this seem plausible, and also to limit it 'for everyone's good.'
There's no equivalent narrative for asset inflation. A house price bubble is labelled an opportunity, not a tragedy.
As Mig says, the other critical difference is leverage - assets can be leveraged to increase their nominal value, consumer goods and services can't.
Politically, the difference leads inevitably to plutocracy - or possibly it starts with plutocracy and leads inevitably towards its maintenance.
Effectively, power is defined by discretionary spending. Asset inflation squeezes discretionary spending, which in turn squeezes the political and economic power of consumers while enhancing the spending power of the ownership class.
Wage 'inflation' has the opposite effect. With generous discretionary income, consumers have more choices about how to spend their time, and aren't limited to 'productive' work.
Another relevant point is that historically, wage inflation has never been the cause of hyper-inflation. Although it's not often stated explicitly, there's often the implication that wage inflation will lead to a run-away inflationary death spiral.
In reality, hyper-inflation always happens for other reasons.
In boom times homo economicus has a high paying job and lives like a bum, and when the bust comes he can cash in.
If this seems implausible to you you must not have met homo economicus, fortunately serious economists seem to know him very well. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
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