Four Stages Of Monetary Madness

There are four stages of fiat money printing that have been used by central banks

throughout their horrific history of usurping the market-based value of money and borrowing costs. It is a destructive path that began with going off the gold standard and historically ends in hyperinflation and economic chaos.

Stage one is the most benign of the four, but it sets the stage for the baneful effects of the remaining three. The first level of monetary credit creation uses the central banks' artificial savings to set short-term interest rates through the buying and selling of short-duration government debt. This stage appears innocuous to most at first but is insidiously destructive because it prevents the market from determining the cost of money. This is crucially important because all assets are priced off of the so called "risk-free" rate of return. A gold standard keeps the monetary base from rising more than a few percentage points per annum and thus restrains bank lending. However, having a fiat currency also means a nation has a fiat monetary base. This leads to unfettered bank lending and the creation of asset bubbles.

The second stage of monetary madness has been around for decades but is now commonly known as Quantitative Easing (QE). After several cycles of lower and lower short-term interest rates that are intended to bring the economy out of successive recessions, the central bank (CB) ends up pegging rates at zero percent or below. Once CBs run out of room on the downside of short-term rates they go out along the yield curve and begin to artificially push down borrowing costs for long-term debt. It is important to note that at this stage CBs only purchase assets on private banks' balance sheets and at least pretend they will someday liquidate these holdings.

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