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Creating liquidity where there is not a demand for liquidity is economically distortionary and has long term economic effects analogous to people who abuse stim
by morpheos137 6y ago
Creating liquidity where there is not a demand for liquidity is economically distortionary and has long term economic effects analogous to people who abuse stimulants or steroids. Yeah liquidity may make your economy feel on top of the world today but over time it will need to pay the piper. There is no such thing as a free lunch and this time is not different.
If the economy needed more liquidity you would see high or rising real interest rates and stationary or falling asset prices. Instead we see very low interest rates and sky-rocketing asset prices. Sure adding liquidity will continue to inflate assets prices for a while but as the other commenter said it does not actually produce anything real and actually leads to malinvestment or underinvestment. Thanks to excessive liquidity in the economy we have BS companies like Uber sticking around while real innovation is stagnating.
Eventually excess liquidity combined with high savings and low interest rates can even paradoxically lead deflation. See Japan for example. We may, also reach a point, where no matter how much liquidity we add we do not stimulate real economic growth.
Regardless the commenter is right, liquidity on its own produces nothing and low interest rates signal that it is not demanded.
Instead of worrying about inflation or deflation we should be worrying about what we can do to make the most people better off at time t+1. Traditionally that has been through economic growth. Liquidity does not promote economic growth if the economy is drowning in liquidity.