Chicago, IL
By A.B. Dada
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To free market economists, such as myself, the term inflation means one thing: the increasing of the money supply. In simple terms, this means creating more money than was previously in existence. Inflation has a primary side effect: the increasing of prices. It has another side effect: malinvestments, which mean that investors see increasing prices in a market, so they put more money into that market, causing prices to skyrocket. This is how bubbles are created, usually put at the fault of the central bank that created all the new money. The third effect of inflation is the boom-and-bust economic cycle.

When most “normal” non-economist people talk of inflation, they mean one thing: the rise in prices. Fuel prices are up double in one year; housing prices skyrocketed 100% to even 300% in some markets in 4 years. People call that inflation, even though it is an effect of inflation, or the creation of new money.

When people speak of this simple definition of inflation, they talk of figures: 5% a year, or 10% a year, or the government’s imaginary figure called CPI of 3.1% or so. Even free market economists look at the price rises and judge them based on a percentage year over year. They’re all wrong. Price increases, the effect of inflation, is even worse.

In a market with a fixed money supply, say gold (but it could be a fixed supply of dollars, or euros, or nails or dirt, too), there’s an interesting side effect in a productive market: prices tend to fall softly over time. This is called deflation, but in fact it is just prices dropping.

When you have a fixed amount of money in an economy, and an increasing supply of goods, more goods chasing the same fixed amount of money mean that prices will fall over time. Your money, over time, becomes more valuable. This is a good thing as it instills a desire to save money rather than spend it frivolously. It means that the poor can save money to become wealthier in the future, and the wealthy who spend it frivolously can lose their wealth quickly in an economy where the money becomes more valuable by just sitting in a bank or under the mattress.

In a fixed money economy, prices tend to fall over time. In an inflationary economy, prices tend to rise over time. We generally look at just the rise in prices year over year, but we ignore the reality that those prices would actually fall, so the true price of inflation is the percentage increase over a year minus the expected decrease of prices in a fixed economy.

Let’s say you have just $100 in an economy, and that doesn’t change. There are 10 apples for sale. People are willing to pay $4 per apple. Now, a new product, oranges is released, and there are 20 oranges. They’re good, maybe better than apples, but they’re in plentiful supply. Because the money supply is fixed at $100, the same money chases both apples and oranges. People are unwilling to pay $4 for apples since a new choice is on the scene: maybe apples fall in value to $3 a piece. That’s a 33% decrease over a period of time in prices.

Now let’s say that you have a central bank that increases the money supply. Maybe they’ll add $10 to the economy. With $110 in the same economy, it is possible that apples would rise in price to $4.40, or an “inflation” figure of 10%. So the experts will say “Look, inflation is 10%!” But they’re ignoring the growth of new products to compete with those apples. Once oranges are introduced, the amount of money being grown to $110, prices might rise, but in reality they’ll fall because of the new supply of goods. Apples might fall to $3.30, which is a larger fall than we’d see in a non-inflationary economy ($1.10) but leaves us with a price higher than in a non-inflationary economy ($3.00). In the end, the apple that would normally fall to $3.00 only fell to $3.30, from $4.00 nominal pricing, which means that the figure normally quoted for inflation can be quite a bit higher.

While it is impossible to gauge what items or markets will increase in price during a period of monetary inflation, we should realize that prices in a stable currency market generally softly fall, as long as there is no surge in demand or drop in supplies. When you factor this “soft deflation” of prices in a fixed-currency economy, you can realize that even the most aggressive inflation figure estimated by free market economists is still off.

Zion, Illinois
By A.B. Dada
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Dr. Ron Paul, candidate for President for 2008, is the only candidate of any party who is warring against the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reseve is a group of bankers and financiers, controlled by the Federal government, who decide regularly to create new money or destroy it. Rarely have they destroyed money (causing prices to fall), instead they usually create new money which causes interest rates to fall, and prices to rise. Prices don’t rise because items become more expensive, instead prices rise because the dollars you hold are losing value as new dollars enter the market. These dollars can be physical (printed) or electronic (injected credit).

Dr. Paul doesn’t go far enough — I believe he should be actively calling for a criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve on a Constitutional basis. There is no basis for the Federal Reserve. Lately, the stock markets in the US, along with the housing market, are on the verge of a virtual crash. Some experts envision a 20% fall, I personally can’t see it stable at any less than a 40% fall. When rents are so far out-of-whack from mortgage payments+overhead (taxes, association fees, maintenance), there is a market deficiency. The Federal Reserve has worked hard to trick consumers into looking around this market deficiency that is solely created by this cartel organization.

Overnight, the Federal Reserve just added another $24 billion dollars to the market, supposedly on a short term basis. They did this because interest rates were growing beyond the rate set by the Federal Reserve. In a free market, interest rates aren’t magically calculated to be the same everywhere — instead, interest rates are set by banks based on how much they need money, or how much money they have. Look at it this way: if a bank needs money from investors in order to loan it out, they will raise rates for savings and money market accounts. This will get people to invest money into the bank, which the bank can loan out. If the bank has a lot of ready cash in their vaults, they will lower interest rates to try to get people to borrow the money. This is how the market works.

When the Federal Reserve tries to target a specific rate, they do so by creating, or destroying money. If rates get ahead of where the Fed wants them to be, they just create new money to loan out, which usually (!) has the effect of lowering rates since there is now an oversupply of money available. The downside of this is that new money created makes your money worth less. The people borrowing the new money are now causing prices for you to rise — you are paying for their loans first.

Dr. Paul is right to want to end the Federal Reserve. This organization has destroyed the dollar since the Fed was created in 1913. The idea is socialist, taking the idea that government knows what is best for your money. Do they? Have you met many government officials who know how to spend your money better than you do? If not, why are you giving them control of your money?

Gary North, academic historian and economist, noted something amazing that many people don’t believe (and that I have been saying for years in a different way): the stock market is a terrible place to make money for most people. Let’s look at North’s example:

If we take the Dow Jones Industrial Average as the benchmark, it was about 1,000 at its peak in early February, 1966. It is about 14,000 today. According to the Inflation Calculator of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the dollar bought 6.5 times as much in 1966, so dividing 14 by 6.5 gives us about 2,150. So, it took 41 years for the DJIA to double in real terms. That’s about 1.9% per year. There were dividends, of course, but these were taxed as regular income. Dividends after 1982 fell to about 2% or less. If the investor was in a DJIA index fund, he paid management fees: maybe 2% per annum. (There were very few no-load index funds in 1966.) If he invested $1,000 in February, 1966, and sells for $14,000 today, he will be taxed 20% on his $13,000 increase. So, he will take away $10,400 in after-tax profits. Divide this by 6.5. We get $1,600. Over 41 years, that’s a return on investment of 1.15% per annum. In other words, the stock market investor after taxes and fees has just about nothing to show for his 41 years of doing without the use of his money.

Just because your dollar value of a stock has gone up over a period of time does not mean that you earned a profit. The Federal Reserve over that period of time has destroyed your dollar’s buying power, yet the other hand of the State taxes you on a paper profit, even if you can buy less with the new value of the stock. As North shows, in 1966 a $1,000 investment “grew” to $14,000 in 2007. Over 41 years, the investment “grew” 1400%. It sounds good, until taxes bite you: that’s a 20% loss, so your “investment” grew 1300%. During that same time period, the dollar fell in value 650% (and probably more, but those are official government statistics), so your investment really only “grew” 200% in value — over 41 years! Is doubling your money over 41 years worthy of the risk of the stock market? I’d say not.

What is worse is if you put the dollars in your mattress. Over 41 years, your money would have gone from being worth $1000 in 1966 to being worth $71 in terms of what it could buy compared to 41 years earlier. This is the Federal Reserve in action. What a joke — and you voters have supported Democrats and Republicans for decades who love this system. It makes them powerful, it finances their friends and relatives, and it steals from the middle class slowly but surely. Even today I hear friends tell me that they’re happy because they earn $60,000 a year versus their parents earning $6,000 a year just 40 years ago. The downside is that houses are $300,000 today (if you’re lucky) versus $20,000 40 years ago, so you’re actually earning less.

Your money is hitting the toilet, without your knowledge. Your pensions may have no actual investment backing, your stock investments aren’t growing in value even if they’re going in dollars. You’re being suckered by a system that taxes 50% of your income annually at various levels of government, and you’re being suckered by a banking system that devalues your dollar by 5-10% a year without you knowing.

Stop being a sucker. Don’t support these monsters in government — not at the Federal level, not at the State level and not at the City level. We need a political party called The No Party which runs on one absolute position: no more growth in government, unless it is negative growth (firing, closing departments, selling property). Dr. Paul runs on a position to reduce the size of the Federal government, but if he wins, the State governments will grow beyond belief. While I do believe we need a President, and a Congress, like Dr. Paul, we need local governments to stay out of our lives just as much.