Coyote Blog

That is the sound of the printing presses running 24/7.  Because that appears to be how we are funding all of Obama’s spending right now (source)

When folks say they are not worried about the deficit, because folks still seem eager to buy our debt (as evidenced by the low interest rates) note that the general public has been a net seller of US debt the first 2 quarters of 2011.  In fact, the only buyer has been Uncle Sam himself, buying up the debt with newly minted cash (or electrons, really).

One other interesting issue, the Fed seems to have been soaking up the money supply in the early days of the recession, before the high-profile business and financial failures really got things moving downward.

This is an interesting and frustrating article describing the efforts by environmental groups to ban thermal paper with BPA in it.  The argument is that thermal paper receipts touch money, contaminating the paper money supply such that people will have BPA pass into their bloodstream by dermal absorption from money.

Of course, this is only scary if you have absolutely no common sense about doses.  The exposures are simply absurdly small, from a chemical that it is not even clear has long-term harms (the article talks about nano-grams of exposure — when you start talking nano-grams, you might as well just count individual molecules).  And, as an added bonus, its ban in thermal paper simply pushes manufacturers to use chemicals that are not necesarily safer, just less studied and without the “BPA” name that the media has tarnished so badly.  Incredibly, at least one state, Connecticut, actually followed through on this useless ban scheme.

You don’t have to convince me money is dirty — I am sure any bill in my pocket is crawling with viruses and bacteria and other weird stuff.  Carrying around money is like toting around pieces of clothing someone else has worn for 6 months without washing.  So I am sure the bills in my pocket are icky, but to get worked up about BPA rubbed off from my last Home Depot receipt is just insane.

This graph of the US monetary supply is un-freaking-believeable.  Someone please tell me that this is a data error or something.  I guess this is one way to bail out borrowers — if you create enough inflation, then the real value of principle owed drops.  Sure looks like it is time to borrow long at fixed rates.  Are real interest rates about to go negative?

Via Phil Miller

By the way, this really gives the lie to the whole government stimulus effort.  They may be moving large amounts of money around, but they can’t create value, and in the absence of real value creation all they are doing is inflating the currency.