There are three kinds of lies...

I was having a discussion with someone a few weeks ago about inflation and the risk the FED is putting the country in with it's constant creation of money. As I discussed in my "*Let's Say..." post, the more you circulate, the less worth each unit holds. Seems simple enough. But then it was announced that there will be no cost of living adjustment for Seniors through social security because there was "no inflation risk" this year. This caused two thoughts. First, if there was no inflation risk and we purposely hold back the increase from these seniors, why then spend $13 billion and give them each $250 checks? Considering their largest cost-of-living increase in 25 years happened last year (5.8%) due to inaccuracies, seniors would actually receive a cut in thier Social Security income this year if calculated fairly. I'm not for cutting their income necesarily, but I question the need to give them $250 bucks when they were just denied an increase - seems more like "Oh crap, they were denied a COLA and now they might be pissed and not support a health bill - let's buy them off and look like the good guy!".

My second thought, and the reason for my post, is the reasoning for the decision - no inflation.

It's no secret that the FED is running printing presses like crazy and pumping money out faster than we can keep up with. So my question was why have we seen no inflation despite this? The main reason is that the banks are saving our butts. Just because the FED makes all the money in the world available, doesn't mean it gets put into circulation. This was a misconception I was under.

"The following chart shows that bank reserves held at the Fed have increased 100-fold over the past 14 months -- from around $10B in August of 2008 to around $1000B ($1T) today. [Nov 2009] It is important to understand that while this explosion in the reserves of US depository institutions has rightfully prompted much discussion and consternation, it hasn't directly added to the total supply of US dollars (bank reserves are not counted in monetary aggregates such as M1, M2, M3, MZM and TMS). The reason that bank reserves aren't added to the money supply is that they do not constitute money available to be spent within the economy; rather, they constitute money that could be loaned into the economy or used to support additional bank lending in the future."
-Bank Reserves And Inflation

So as long as the holdings remain in reserve inflation can be kept limited. The biggest worry I have is when this money does start being loaned out without careful consideration about it's affect and then what I expect would be a failed attempt to pull the money back.

"...money enters the economy at specific points and therefore affects different parts of the economy in different ways at different times. (As an aside, this is why monetary inflation is such a popular policy. If increasing the money supply caused all prices to immediately rise by a similar amount then nobody could benefit from the inflation, but the way inflation actually works is that the first receivers of the new money obtain a benefit, at the expense of everyone else, by getting to spend the money before it loses purchasing power. The first receivers of the new money tend to be the government, the banks, and the supporters and pet projects of politicians.)
[...]
The main point we are leading to is that the damage done by injecting a lot of new money into the economy cannot be undone by subsequently removing money from the economy. With regard to the current situation, the monetary profligacy of the past year has propped-up many businesses that should no longer exist and prompted investments that would not have been viable in the absence of the "stimulus". These businesses and investments will inevitably fail after pressure is applied to the monetary brake. And if the central bank refrains from tapping on the monetary brake then an inflation problem will emerge that even the Keynesians can recognize."
-Withdrawing the Stimulus

I won't bore you with more thoughts on that, but here is an article that may help in understanding the relationship (and lack of one) between reserves and true money supply - and another article which helps explain the Inflation process. I know I posted a bunch of links, but they're worth reading IMO.

By the way, remember how the stimulus package was to save jobs? Unemployment rate is at %10.2.

"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to [Benjamin] Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'
-Mark Twain