Alasdair Macleod: Fiat money quantity breaks $15 trillion

By Alasdair Macleod
GoldMoney.com, St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands
Thursday, January 5, 2017

The fiat money quantity has now breached the $15 trillion level, standing at $15,108 trillion on November 1, 2016, the last calculable date. This is now $6.3 trillion above the pre-Lehman crisis trendline, exceeding it by 72 percent. Instead of the Lehman rescue being a temporary fix, the increase in the quantity of fiat money has continued to grow over eight years later.

After the Fed responded to the financial crisis, monetarist commentators warned that the accumulation of bank reserves at the Fed would one day be unleashed into an expansion of bank lending, because every dollar held in reserves could become more than $10 of bank credit. The accumulation of these reserves had had no precedent, and monetary policy was therefore in uncharted territory.

The only way bank reserves can be discouraged from leaving the Fed's balance sheet is for the Fed to increase the Fed Funds Rate (FFR), which is the interest rate the Fed pays commercial banks on these reserves. The original concern is now becoming justified, because banks have been gradually withdrawing reserves held at the Fed over the last 18 months. For this reason, the Fed had no alternative but to raise the FFR in December 2015 and in December 2016, to start the process of normalizing rates. The Federal Open Markets Committee should be watching the withdrawal of reserves as a key indicator in formulating interest rate policy, not that it is openly admitted in the FOMC's statements. ...

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https://wealth.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/fmq-breaks-15-t...