Manias and Asset Inflation
摘要
Monetary inflation shows up as goods inflation and asset inflation. These symptoms require careful diagnosis. For example, we reviewed earlier in this volume (see pp.) how rapid productivity growth or any other type of sustained increase in the supply side of the economy camouflage the symptom of monetary inflation in the goods markets; recorded CPI inflation might seem benign—at say around zero—but the underlying condition be inflationary in the sense that under sound money prices should fall at such times. Similarly—and some would say more so—there are issues in identifying asset inflation. It is misleading to equate asset prices with a general rise in the price of assets, as has occurred in some of the literature on the topic (for example see Schwartz 2002) or in the general dictionaries of definitions (but not in the glossary of Brown and Pringle 2022), even though episodes of asset inflation usually include a sub-period during which that occurs.