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This essay seems to rely explicitly on the idea that Government deficits are always monetised, and that the Central Bank is forced to do this and has no say in the matter, which causes inflation.

That seems empirically incorrect - debt monetisation is practically peformed using quantitative easing (where new money is issued to buy government debt) which is a policy instrument under the direct control of western Central Banks. If Central Banks cease quantitative easing, or engage in quantitative tightening (as all western Central Banks have done), then there's no reason for a fiscal deficit to be inherently inflationary, and therefore no reason for rising interest rates to cause inflation.



I think her argument is that while QE on its own is not necessarily inflationary, as it increases base money supply but not necessarily broad money supply, fiscal deficits are inflationary due to them ending up directly as broad money. And… This does seem to be the case, I can’t think of any government spending that wouldn’t directly become broad money.

Note also that she’s not implying that therefore not raising the rates would reduce inflation. In fact she states clearly that this would lead to even more problems and picks on Erdogan for doing this.

Her argument seems to be that inflation is going to be persistent for the foreseeable future until something changes. E.g. commodities becoming cheaper due to external factors and/or debt to GDP ratio slowly getting inflated away as inflation persists and rates stay just below it.


How does it turn out in practice? I don't think the central banks are as independent as it's thought. At least not in most countries.




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