In our 3rd October email alert we wrote: "The Fed expanded its balance sheet by $254B during the one-week period ending 1st October, which follows a $204B expansion during the preceding week. As a result, the Fed's balance sheet has grown by almost 50% within the space of just two weeks. This, we believe, is unprecedented."
Last week's money creation by the Fed won't appear in broader money-supply data until the end of this week, but the week-before-last's expansion of the Fed's balance sheet has given the True Money Supply (TMS), our preferred monetary aggregate, a substantial boost. In fact, it has pushed the year-over-year (YOY) TMS growth rate from 3.75% to 7.0%, thus signaling a new major upward trend. The situation is depicted below.
Money Velocity
Many analysts will undoubtedly claim that the increasing rate of money-supply growth isn't important because the velocity of money will remain low, but such claims reveal a misunderstanding. There is no magical quantity called "velocity" that operates independently of money supply and demand, causing prices to rise during some periods and to fall during others. Like changes in the purchasing power of money, the thing commonly called "money velocity" is simply an effect of inflation.
By way of further explanation, during the early part of a major upward trend in money-supply growth it will typically be the case that inflation is not widely perceived as a problem. Actually, it's quite likely that deflation will be seen as the bigger threat. This is the situation that we often refer to as a "deflation scare" -- rising money-supply growth (inflation) combined with rising fear of deflation, with the fear of deflation being fanned by falling commodity and equity prices.
During the early part of an inflation cycle the demand for cash balances will tend to be relatively high -- due to falling inflation expectations -- and the average economist will perceive a low "velocity of money". But as time goes by the effects of the increased rate of money-supply growth will start becoming apparent and people will become a little more conscious of the inflation threat, the result being a decline in the demand for cash balances (people will begin to save less cash). The average economist will interpret this as an increase in the velocity of money and may well conclude that prices have begun to rise in response to the increased velocity. Clearly, though, both the increase in velocity and the rise in the general price level are just lagged EFFECTS of the preceding money-supply growth.
The bottom line is that "money velocity" is a redundant concept at best and a misleading one at worst.
A pronounced and sustained increase in the rate of money-supply growth ALWAYS leads to substantially higher prices somewhere in the economy, but due to the time-lags involved it will often be difficult to see the link between money-supply changes and price changes. For example, the rapid rises in the prices of many everyday items over the past three years occurred while the money supply was growing slowly. These price rises were an effect of the rapid money-supply growth that occurred during the first few years of the decade. Also, the quickening in the rate of money-supply growth that has just begun and looks set to continue over the coming year will probably be accompanied by a slowing rate of increase in the general price level, thus setting the scene for a "deflation scare". The reason is that the prices of everyday items have yet to react to the slower money-supply growth of 2005-2007.""Inflation's New Upward Trend", Steve Saville
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