The Ghost of Christmas Inflation

This is part of an ongoing series of essays on inflation.  This one is at Project Syndicate. The next post is somewhat longer and more academic with the same themes. 

The Ghost of Christmas Inflation

Inflation continues to surge. From its inflection point in February 2021 to last month, the US consumer price index has grown 6% – an 8% annualized rate. 

The underlying cause is no mystery. Starting in March 2020, the US government created about $3 trillion of new bank reserves (an equivalent to cash) and sent checks to people and businesses. The Treasury then borrowed another $2 trillion or so and sent even more checks. The total stimulus comes to about 25% of GDP, and to around 30% of the original federal debt. While much of the money went to help people and businesses severely hurt by the pandemic, much of it was also sent regardless of need, intended as stimulus (or “accommodation”) to stoke demand. The goal was to induce people to spend, and that is what they are now doing. 

Milton Friedman once said that if you want inflation, you can just drop money from helicopters. That is basically what the US government has done. But this US inflation is ultimately fiscal, not monetary. People do not have an excess of money relative to bonds; rather, people have extra savings and extra apparent wealth to spend. Had the government borrowed the entire $5 trillion to write the same checks, we likely would have the same inflation. 

Fiscal theory update

Whew. The penultimate draft of The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level is now done, and in the hands of the copy-editors at Princeton. There is still time to send me typos, thinkos, wrong equations, excessive repetition and more! 

Do we live in China?

Google/Youtube's "misinformation" policy. 

You may not "contradict... local health authorities' (LHA) or the World Health Organization."  But read the note, they might change their mind, so watch truth/misinformation change in real time.  

Really? Scientific discussion never contradicts the edicts of "authorities?" Political discussion never does so? 

HT Martin Bazant's six foot rule lecture 

The ECB's dilemma

I have been emphasizing the Fed's dilemma: If it raises interest rates, that raises the U.S. debt-service costs. 100% debt to GDP means that 5% interest rates translate to 5% of GDP extra deficit, $1 trillion for every year of high interest rates. If the government does not tighten by that amount, either immediately or credibly in the future, then the higher interest rates must ultimately raise, rather than lower, inflation. 

Jesper Rangvid points out that the problem is worse for the ECB. Recall there was a euro crisis in which Italy appeared that it might not be able to roll over its debt and default. Mario Draghi pledged to do "whatever it takes" including buying Italian debt to stop it and did so. But Italian debt is now 160% of GDP, and the ECB is still buying Italian bonds. What happens if the ECB raises interest rates to try to slow down inflation? Well, Italian debt service skyrockets. 5% interest rates mean 8% of GDP to debt service. 

FTPL article

I wrote a short-ish article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives on Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. It tries to summarize the 700 page book in a readable article with no equations. Let me know how I'm doing -- comments most welcome. 

Debt Video

 

This is a short video summarizing papers r<g? and (better) section 6.4 of Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. Do low interest costs on the debt mean the government never has to pay it back? If the government doesn't have to repay debts, why do any of us citizens have to repay debts? Let the government borrow, pay off our student, mortgage, and auto debt. Let it send us checks and we can all stop working, paying taxes, and just order things from Amazon. Hmm. Something is wrong here...

The main point. We have 5% of GDP primary deficits, and bigger coming. A r<g of 1% is a fun possibility for  government with 1% of GDP deficits and 100% debt to GDP. But it still leaves us 4% in the hole, and then the next crisis, pandemic, war, or social security and medicare come along.  

Kudos to the Hoover Policy-Ed team (This video on their website, with additional material) and especially Shana Farley and Tom Church, who managed to boil down a complex subject to an understandable video. The animations are impressive. Yes, the guy talking needs acting lessons (it's a lot better at 1.25 speed) and a haircut. Next time... 

Inflation speculation

I'm working madly to finish The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. This is a draft of Chapter 21, on how to think about today's emerging inflation and what lies ahead, through the lens of fiscal theory. (Also available as pdf). I post it here as it may be interesting, but also to solicit input on a very speculative chapter. Help me not to say silly things, in a book that hopefully will last longer than a blog post! Feel free to send comments by email too. 

Chapter 21. The Covid inflation 

As I finish this book's manuscript in Fall 2021, inflation has suddenly revived. You will know more about this event by the time you read this book, in particular whether inflation turned out to be ``transitory,'' as the Fed and Administration currently insist, or longer lasting. This section must be speculative, and I hope rigorous analysis will follow once the facts are known. Still, fiscal theory is supposed to be a framework for thinking about monetary policy, so I would be remiss not to try. 

Figure 1. CPI through the Covid-19 recession.

Figure 1 presents the CPI through the covid recession. Everything looks normal until February 2021. From that point to October 2021 the CPI rose  5.15% (263.161 to 276.724), a 7.8% annual rate.

What happened, at least through the lens of the simple fiscal theory models in this book? Well, from March 2020 through early 2021, the U.S. government -- Treasury and Fed acting together -- created about $3 trillion new money and sent people checks. The Treasury borrowed an additional $2 trillion, and sent people more checks. M2, including checking and savings accounts, went up $5.5 trillion dollars. $5 trillion is a nearly 30% increase in the $17 trillion of debt outstanding at the beginning of the Covid recession. Table 21.1 and Figure 2 summarize. ($3 trillion is the amount of Treasury debt purchased by the Fed, and also the sum of larger reserves and currency.  Federal debt held by the public includes debt held by the Federal Reserve.)

M2, debt, and monetary base (currency + reserves) through the Covid-19 recession.

Some examples: In March 2020, December 2020, and again in March 2021, in response to the deep recession induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, the government sent ``stimulus'' checks, totaling $3,200 to each adult and $2,500 per child. The government added a refundable child tax credit, now up to $3,600per child, and started sending checks immediately. Unemployment compensation, rental assistance, food stamps and so forth sent checks to people. The ``paycheck protection program'' authorized $659 billion to small businesses. And more. The payments were partly designed as economic insurance, transfers from people doing well during covid to those who had lost jobs or businesses, and efforts to keep businesses from failing. But they were also in large part, intentionally, designed as fiscal-monetary stimulus to boost aggregate demand and keep the economy going. The  massive ``infrastructure'' and ``reconciliation'' spending plans occupied the Congress through 2021, adding expectations of more deficits to come.  

From a fiscal-theory perspective, the episode looks like a classic fiscal helicopter drop. There is a large increase in government debt, transferred to people, who do not expect that debt to be repaid. It is a``fiscal shock,'' a decline in surpluses s_t, with no expectation of larger subsequent surpluses. Of course it led to inflation!