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To: Pelham
Inflation erodes the value of the dollar and can make credit impractical but it doesn’t threaten to collapse the banking system. Deflation does that.

Markets necessarily require buyers and sellers. When buyers are priced out of the credit market the credit market ceases to operate efficiently, if at all. Which could also correctly be called be called credit market weakness. Which existed along with gas lines, ammo free Army units and hostages during the Carter years.

47 posted on 12/04/2008 6:26:17 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: jwalsh07

I was in my 20s during the Carter years and know what happened.

Inflation makes loans expensive, and in the era of Regulation Q even dried up lending. Inflation can be fought in the manner that Fed Chairman Paul Volcker employed, putting the brakes on monetary growth and allowing interest rates to skyrocket.

That is not anything like a deflationary collapse of the credit market, which is far more serious and against which the Fed’s basket of tools may not be effective.


48 posted on 12/04/2008 8:37:16 PM PST by Pelham (Obama: Reconstruction version 2.0)
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