If inflation actually mitigated a trade deficit, Zimbabwe would be one of the world's leading exporters. Inflation doesn't lower real prices for anybody. But even if inflation did mitigate a trade deficit by lowering real prices for foreigners, while making things more expensive for Americans, why would that be a good thing? Why should American economic policy be calculated to make things cheaper for foreigners and more expensive for Americans? Economic growth -- which is not measured by the GDP -- engenders falling prices, which is a good thing.
Pro-inflationary stimulus has served one purpose: preventing prices from falling to reflect wages. The market then fails to clear. The real issue isn't even the direction of nominal prices, but what prices would otherwise be absent central bank manipulation. Even if prices fall in nominal terms while wages fall much faster, then we're still suffering from the consequences of inflation. We can be suffering from lost price deflation. Falling nominal prices engender rising real wages.
Inflationary policy by the FOMC suppresses nominal interest rates by increasing the supply of loanable funds, but without a genuine expansion of savings to fund investment. Investment can only come out of savings since producers must be able to consume in order to sustain the process of production. Deploying printing-press money (i.e. unearned income) transfers money away from producers and the process of production to consumers. Inflationary stimulus disconnects consumption from production, turning Say's Law upside down. Thus inflation not only drives capital overseas, but begets capital consumption. Inflation is injurious to the process of production.
Increasing the money supply tricks the loan market into consummating unjustifiable loans to non-credit worthy projects. That's why malinvestment occurs and projects are halted midstream with the revelation of malinvestment. By allowing debtors to pay back creditors with devalued dollars, real interest rates are suppressed. There's no right way for the loan market to extend credit at negative real rates, which is a negative ROR in real terms. That's a calculus for the loan market to go bust as it did in 2008. See: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/hist/h3hist1.htm [now the information must be downloaded]. Check out the early months of 2008. That's not psychological and that's not a matter of consumer confidence.
The long end of the curve is most sensitive to market forces while the short end of the curve is most sensitive to FOMC policy. If the Fed stays loose to prop up the bond market, this will undermine the very bond market the Fed is trying to prop up. Investors/lenders will account for the inflation risk by tacking an inflation agio onto the curve. Eventually, the Fed will lose control over the short end, too. Under the scenario where the Fed stays loose, there will be no floor underneath the dollar nor any roof on interest rates. If the Fed tightens, the short end will collapse instantaneously, bringing the long end down, too.
Under the scenario where the Fed props up the bond market indefinitely, both the bond market and the dollar collapse. Dollars will hit par value with the par value of bonds. The Fed will be left with $15 trillion plus -- in nominal terms -- worth of bonds on its balance sheet, and we will be left with both junk bonds and junk dollars. The dollar itself will go bankrupt. What's the par value of bonds? We don't know, because the Fed has been propping up the bond market.
Under the scenario where the Fed tightens, the bond market will collapse, but the dollar will be saved. Dollars won't hit par value with the par value of bonds. The only way to save the dollar is at the expense of the bond market.
Until the Fed is compelled to tighten, we won't have an economic recovery. The loan market has to set interest rates pursuant to the true supply of savings. If interest rates were to hit, say, ten percent on the two-year with a $15 trillion national debt, do the math. The longer interest rates are artificially suppressed, the higher they will have to go in order to correct the imbalances in the economy.
By tightening sooner rather than later, this will not only allow the market to discover the natural rate of interest by letting interest rates rise, this will encourage capital inflow. Capital naturally gravitates towards cheaper, higher-yielding, more efficient economies. It's called arbitrage. The Fed is waging an eternal struggle against arbitrage.
If a person, firm, or institution is dependent upon inflationary credit expansion -- as opposed to non-inflationary -- for sustenance, that person, firm, or institution is -- by definition -- insolvent. Somebody or some institution (e.g., the government) is spending beyond their/its means. As a nation, we have spent beyond our means. Expenditures exceed earnings and we depend on foreign markets to supply us with production.
Inflation (i.e., the creation of money ex nihilo) is no substitute for income-generating investment, which inflicts further injury upon an already precarious economy. There's no right way to invest in the U.S. economy. It's error to conflate trading with investing. Buying real estate is not investment. I'll draw the distinction between trading and investing. A trader buys and sells a particular asset class based on nominal price movements. An investor buys and holds a particular asset class based on returns from the underlying asset class itself. In the case of real estate, that would be rents.
The problem isn't a lack of regulatory oversight. One can't regulate away past mistakes. Insolvency can't be regulated away. The only solution is to force up interest rates, prices fall, dollars that have accumulated in foreign reserves will flow back into the domestic loan market, which will then beget a lower natural rate of interest. Any other solution will lead to the destruction of the currency, in which case everybody's savings get wiped out. Loose monetary policy to prop up a spending orgy engenders capital outflow (i.e. begets outsourcing).
Inflation is a tax. There's no objective difference between the government taking the money you have in your pocket and duplicating the money you have in your pocket, thus devaluing the purchasing power of what you have in your pocket. Even if prices don't rise in nominal terms, the real issue is what prices would otherwise be absent central bank manipulation.
Furthermore, if one is going to hold the position that inflation is synonymous with economic growth, then they're boxed into advocating skyrocketing prices in order to have a fast economic recovery. The way to have a fast economic recovery under such a scenario would be to have prices rise fast. I believe there's a term for that. It's called hyperinflation. Who supports hyperinflation?
The only path to an economic recovery runs through monetary tightening by the Fed. Waiting until we have an economic recovery before tightening is a calculus to destroy the currency and the economy. When the currency collapses is impossible to predict, but the currency will eventually collapse if current policies aren't abandoned. Absent dealing with monetary policy, no politician offers us an economic solution.
[1] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/10/content_11160595.htm
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