The Remy bitcion billionare Venuzuela remix- "I'm a Bolivar billionare spending money like I don't care. Then one day there was some warfare...."
Recently I’ve been looking at 22K gold jewelry weights. The smallest bangle and necklace that looks good and is durable enough for daily wear is about 1/4oz of gold. Real gold is not infinitely divisible.
There is also the option of "thick 'n' heavy" rapper-style gold chains. But few people are shameless enough to wear them. If you have too many, you will need at least 2 bodyguards. The bullion gold "chocolate bars" that can be broken into smaller units are not among people's preferred bullion products. Interestingly, people prefer Certicard-cased gold and coins instead. Premiums are high too.
I can't take the Australian weather, too dry. This year will prove to be another extreme weather year. Huge rains, non-stop from June to September across Asia. Which means cooler nights and better air quality, and no burning of palm oil.
Consumer goods price increases rising here in the States pretty fast at the grocery. Its noticeable from week to week now, at least for what we buy. We watch prices every week. So much for no inflation haha.
Oftentimes our perceptions of reality are impacted by our preconceived ideas and especially our bias. This is especially true in economics. If someone thinks money-printing is going to cause inflation then they'll be looking for evidence of that around them in order to confirm that bias. In other words, anecdotal evidence is never that compelling. That's why data is important. In the EU inflation ticked down for most of 2020, naturally. It's now starting to rise slightly and is projected to reach pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021 as consumer markets make the readjustment back to the norm. In the US inflation didn't fall as far as in the EU and has ticked up in Q1 back to pre-pandemic levels. Long term the inflation rate has been in a general downturn, but it can can be argued that it is susceptible to cyclical events rather than the effects of QE. And of course some stuff has gone up in price over time, whereas other stuff has fallen. And some stuff is subject to huge variability whilst other stuff is not. https://data.oecd.org/price/inflation-forecast.htm#indicator-chart The point I'm making is that there is very little evidence that money printing and loose fiscal policy has any long lasting impact upon the inflation rate* and I would expect that trend to continue as it has in Japan since the early 1990's. Australia: *What accommodative monetary policy does do is drive up the price of assets.
I do 90% of the purchasing for my business, what do I by ? bits and bobs of everything, mostly steel and things related to its manufacture, bolts, grinding discs, cutting discs, gas, mig wire/electrodes and a bunch of other related stuff as I also pre-clad finish for some projects and install almost complete units for facades. I'm witnessing prices moving up, its not my preconceived ideas in my head, we have had steel price increases in October, and November last year, 3-5% on most products, this year one increase in Feb of 4-6% on all products and before that clicked in all steel merchants put out another increase of 8-10% on all products effective of March 8th. Sheet and coil, purlins, flashing's and roof sheets have another increasing of 5% effective first week of April. So at the bottom end of some steel products have moved up 15% and others have moved up over 20% in a 6th month period. Arc welding electrodes have almost doubled in the last 6-8 months. Even the price of cold gal and primer touch up paint has gone up - I use local made Sure some assets have gone up a hell of a lot and will continue to particularly lower end of houses and regional/hobby farms. Timmy
I'm not denying prices of some goods and commodities have gone up. It's when people base their economic predictions upon what they perceive the world to be as a whole from their small position in it that problems arise. It's a compositional fallacy. They then apply this faulty reasoning to the economy as a whole and assume that widespread inflation is occurring or will occur, and then they look for evidence to back up their mistaken assumptions and when they arrive at a possible explanation ie money printing they seize that while ignoring the actual evidence to the contrary. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/price-changes-in-consumer-goods-and-services-in-the-usa-1997-2017 And the price of gold has fallen.
I found this a nice recap. https://quillette.com/2021/03/07/th...2E-3BF2i7t_q4dFWMv-oIRG4F9HmPHFrd7Mm_7clM1aMc Yet I agree - it will take longer than many expect.
High demand + low production = inflation. How well the government manages that will determine the likely inflationary outcomes. The Austrian in me says they can't, my new-found knowledge of MMT says they can as long as they address unemployment first. Which means any fiscal stimulus packages have to create extra work for individuals so that consumer demand for goods/services is met, not just extra work for companies utilising roughly the same amount of labour as they currently have. Jobs are the key in driving the economy forward, just as jobs are the first thing that businesses slash when the economy is nose-diving. The more people that are employed the less inflationary pressures are brought to bear on the economy because productivity can rise, and that doesn't mean hiring millions to dig trenches with teaspoons.
