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The article's entire thrust seems to rest on two points:
  • Inflation can happen due to natural demand growth---it doesn't have to imply monetary debasement
  • The US dollar remains strong
On the first point, he's not wrong. But just because natural demand growth can lead to higher prices doesn't mean debasement isn't also at work. He didn't offer any compelling breakdown of how much of inflation was due to natural demand factors outpacing supply, and how much was due to increases in nominal demand from monetary debasement. I'd argue that the amount of inflation would have been much lower without monetary debasement. He didn't disprove that case.
Furthermore, in a naturally growing economy, both demand and supply expand. Supply expands due to growing productivity and resource availability, which is what to expect in a naturally expanding economy. Debasement, on the other hand, increases nominal demand without any of that naturally occurring supply expansion. So to me, it's actually more plausible that more of the currency devaluation has been from debasement than from natural economic expansion.
On the second point, he makes three supporting arguments:
  1. US dollar is still strong compared to other currencies.
  2. M2 growth is highly correlated with GDP growth and although the past few years have been outliers, M2 relative to GDP is coming down
  3. Stocks have outperformed gold
On point 1, I don't think this is a good argument because people who are alarmed about debasement aren't just alarmed about US debasement, they're alarmed about global monetary debasement.
On point 2, you can't deny that we've been in a persistently high outlier state since the 2008 financial crisis. I think that's what's got people worried. It's nice that things are coming down a bit, but it's still super high historically and there's no guarantee it'll keep coming down.
On point 3, I don't find this compelling. Stocks are holdings in companies that own real assets, so you'd expect their price to go up in a monetary debasement regime just like you'd expect the price of real estate and gold and bitcoin to all go up. So showing that one asset class outperformed another doesn't say much about debasement to me.
@remindme in 3 hours
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @nichro 18h
Such a sinister, suspenseful reminder
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Me and @Undisciplined are gonna THROW DOWN
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Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I have no bones to pick with that summary and assessment.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nichro 16h
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