>This makes sense to me as printing money dilutes the value of currency, making everything more expensive across the board rather than one specific sector.
So, this relationship between money supply and inflation is definitely correct and likely a major driver of current inflation. However, money supply is not always the primary driver of inflation there are other drivers that can at times be more or less important.
Now, Dr. Friedman certainly believed that money supply was the primary cause of inflation. Though reading his most important work written with Ms. Schwartz he was not as dogmatic as you might see on old TV clips. Check out this bigger picture Wikipedia graph and you can see that the correlation between changes in money supply and inflation is not straightforward even when you consider delayed effects. Certainly if it were a simple relation then an independent central bank would have an easy time keeping inflation under control.
So, what else can drive inflation? Along with the supply of money another very important driver is the supply of things to buy with that money. For instance, if the supply of oil decreases and the supply of money were to stay the same, because oil is pretty necessary for our current society we would experience inflation. The bank of Australia has a broader primer on inflation that has more detail than I can get into here including the important aspect of peoples' behavior. Today both money supply, as you noted, but also many, supply, shocks, are driving inflation upwards quickly.
Good news: a market correction is definitely not the only way to reduce inflation. There are plenty of examples but a recent one is inflation rates dropped quite low through the 2010s with generally decent economic growth. Bad news: market downturns don't always bring down inflation either. Centralbanks are currently trying to reduce inflation without causing a major downturn. It is not an easy task, however, and there are many drivers of inflation that are out of the control of the reserve banks and governments.
Surrational0 t1_j22vmza wrote
Reply to comment by Exceedingly in Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology by AutoModerator
>This makes sense to me as printing money dilutes the value of currency, making everything more expensive across the board rather than one specific sector.
So, this relationship between money supply and inflation is definitely correct and likely a major driver of current inflation. However, money supply is not always the primary driver of inflation there are other drivers that can at times be more or less important.
Now, Dr. Friedman certainly believed that money supply was the primary cause of inflation. Though reading his most important work written with Ms. Schwartz he was not as dogmatic as you might see on old TV clips. Check out this bigger picture Wikipedia graph and you can see that the correlation between changes in money supply and inflation is not straightforward even when you consider delayed effects. Certainly if it were a simple relation then an independent central bank would have an easy time keeping inflation under control.
So, what else can drive inflation? Along with the supply of money another very important driver is the supply of things to buy with that money. For instance, if the supply of oil decreases and the supply of money were to stay the same, because oil is pretty necessary for our current society we would experience inflation. The bank of Australia has a broader primer on inflation that has more detail than I can get into here including the important aspect of peoples' behavior. Today both money supply, as you noted, but also many, supply, shocks, are driving inflation upwards quickly.
Good news: a market correction is definitely not the only way to reduce inflation. There are plenty of examples but a recent one is inflation rates dropped quite low through the 2010s with generally decent economic growth. Bad news: market downturns don't always bring down inflation either. Central banks are currently trying to reduce inflation without causing a major downturn. It is not an easy task, however, and there are many drivers of inflation that are out of the control of the reserve banks and governments.