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This article literally says, "The central bank created new reserves out of thin air" the premise of the article seems to be more about taking issue with the fac

This article literally says, "The central bank created new reserves out of thin air" the premise of the article seems to be more about taking issue with the fact that the "money printer go brrr" meme popularized in the media doesn't tell the whole story and over simplifies the mechanism. The key point is that when the Fed buys a bond from an investor that investor has cash which they can then take an buy something else with. Bond buying drives down rates and to the extent rates are kept low because of the bond buying causes other assets like stocks and real-estate to inflate in price because instead of buying another bond the investor buys some other kind of asset. People then take out loans collateralized by these inflated assets and there is your inflation. So long as you always keep total borrowing on an uptrend over time you basically create permanent inflation.

martinko 5y ago
The issue with reserves is that they are not money, they have no way of getting into the real economy, they just sit on bank's balance sheets. At the end of the day, its up to commercial banks to create new, spendable money. The whole reserve thing is just to incentivize them.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > issue with reserves is that they are not money When talking about money and banking, the word "money" is useless at best. Reserves, Federal Reserve notes (i.e. paper money), coins, deposits, Treasuries, commercial paper, gold and wampum are each money. Central banks converting Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities into reserves lets commercial banks create deposits at greater scale. That ceteris paribus increases aggregate demand which can put pressure on broader price levels.