The bigger issue isn't just a decrease in consumer spending; it's a decrease in investment (public markets, private equity, consumer loans, etc). If a bank can

The bigger issue isn't just a decrease in consumer spending; it's a decrease in investment (public markets, private equity, consumer loans, etc). If a bank can just sit on their dollars, and see a guaranteed rate of return potentially higher than a risk-adjusted rate of return after investment, that will happen more often. It trades a reduction in the long-term health of the real economy for an increase in the short-term health of the currency, but over a long enough period of time all currencies are a projection of the health of their real economy. The Swiss example is a poor one, given the makeup of their economy is nothing like most of the rest of the world, with its bias toward the finance sector. The finance sector would love deflation; they can take no risk and win, or they can take risks (issue consumer loans) and also increase their probability of winning. All that being said: there's a "correlation not causation" issue in that, the US originally set its "inflation as a target" policy back in the late-60s/early-70s. Ever since then, it doesn't matter what metric you look at, they've all gone sour [1]. Theoretically, causatively, some inflation is good for consumers; but correlatively, its difficult to ignore it as a potential cause for why everything sucks. It's moreso a matter of figuring out... why. [1] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/