jambarama

There is concern about inflation from the level of Fed lending & rate of M1 creation. However the bigger inflationary threat is when banks start lending again and this huge amount of money starts moving. There is also a threat of deflation though, offsetting this inflationary pressure, at least to some degree. For example, falling house & stock prices do wipe out a lot of wealth (real or otherwise, and perhaps good or bad) - which adds deflationary pressure.

So it is a balance between inflation & deflation. Clearly the fed sees deflation as a bigger issue right now - the fed can fight inflation, negative interest rates that plagued japan for a decade are much harder for a central bank to fix. They've cut short term lending rates as much as they can, effectively wiping out interest rates. Personally, I don't know if they're lending too much or too little, and I'm sure Congress doesn't either, so I'm not convinced regulation (and the attendant political pressure) would be a net gain.

Wow, that's like twitter & facebook combined. And on steroids. That's a really scary app.