Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Summer activity

It's summer and although not formally term time, I tend to keep posting on here regardless with hopefully interesting stuff in case former students are still tuning in, so to speak.

Of interest yesterday, alongside the injustice handed out to Ukraine by human error (and some economics - why did UEFA really think adding more scope for human error was better than goal line technology?), was inflation falling to 2.8%, its lowest level for quite a while. Importantly, firmly back within the target range.

How is that possible, given all this quantitative easing and continued budget deficits? You'll recall the former adds liquid assets to the economy in place of illiquid ones hence should see more spending. The latter also adds more money into the economy by putting unearned money in the hands of unemployed people and such, and via spending projects for example related to the Olympics.

The answer is that this extra money, for now, isn't being spent. You'll also recall the aggregate demand (AD) aggregate supply explanation for price level determination and hence inflation. If AD stays in the same place since we don't spend then we won't get inflation despite supposedly inflationary policies.

No comments:

Post a Comment