Top strategist: “I believe printing money to be a fundamentally dishonest endeavour”
Dylan Grice takes a strong stand against government money creation. Mr. Grice is one of the world’s foremost finacial strategists according to the Thomson Extel Survey.
Here’s his view, heavily edited for brevity. Read the full transcript here.
…I believe printing money to be a fundamentally dishonest endeavour. Think about how it works. When the central bank, at zero cost, increases the monetary base by 1%, where does that money go? Answer: into the market for government bonds.
By issuing bonds to itself the government seems to have miraculously raised
revenue without burdening anyone else. This is probably why the mechanism is
universally adopted throughout the world’s financial system. Yet free money does
not, and cannot, exist… someone, somewhere has to pay.But who? This is where the subtle dishonesty resides, because the answer is that
no-one knows…The point is we can’t know who will pay, only that
someone will pay. Thus the government has raised revenues
without even knowing upon whom the burden falls, let alone telling them.The burden of this money printing…seeps silently into the
economy, falling indiscriminately but indubitably on unseen, unknowing victims.
The full article is much more extensive and highly worth reading. In particular he makes the point that increases in asset valuations, not just goods as measured by the CPI, should be included in the inflation calculation.
Mr. Grice prefers the classical definition of inflation, which is inflation of the money supply. For those who share this view, here’s a sobering chart…
