tisdag 19 juli 2022

Control of Inflation by Interest Rate?

Hyperinflation is now hitting Western society after a long period of very low interest rates and money printing combined with low inflation. State Banks are now raising interest rates to curb the inflation. But is this possible and advisable? Let see what common sense can say:

1. Interest rates can be seen as a cost of capital balancing risk. With very low interest rates anybody can borrow big money for any investment, many of which will not deliver, and that is not good. On the other hand, with high interest rates even clever people will not dare to invest, and that is not good. So a moderate interest rate maybe around 2-4% may be optimal. Instead we have had a period since 2008 with essentially zero interest rate with raising stock and housing markets to record levels.

2.  We now see a hyperinflation caused by increasing cost of energy because of a massive turn to solar and wind energy away from fossil and nuclear energy. But this is not true inflation but simply increased costs for energy production. 

3. But you cannot lower energy costs by raising interest rates, only increase,  and so the attempted policy of raising interest rates to curb inflation caused by an energy crisis cannot work. But it seems sound to give up the zero interest rate policy, which has caused a stock market and housing bubble, which is a form of hyperinflation although it is not included in the consumer price index used to measure zero inflation.  

4. On the hand, turning to more efficient fossil and nuclear energy production would lower consumer price index to a deflation, which would give people more for the money and it would be insane to seek to balance by letting interest rates go negative as has been the current policy.

5. So the way out of the coming crisis is to return to fossil and  nuclear energy production, and that is what we are now seeing coming. This is nothing which is controlled by a very low or very high interest rate, a moderate would be fine. The obsession by the Swedish State Bank boss Stefan Ingves to seek to control inflation up and down by the interest rate up and down, has been based on ideas in direct opposition to common sense and thus led to very negative consequences for people. 

Here is the variation of US inflation and interest rate over the period 1998-2022 showing that the interest rate does not control the inflation:





   

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