Spot the error

About errors in the video:

I think it was ok until they start speaking to the banker about five minutes in. Then the errors begin.

  1. That 2% inflation a year is good. Why is losing 2% of my money good? Why is losing any percent of my money good?

  2. That it can be controlled by the interest rate. He explains that if interest is high, people will be reluctant to borrow money. So that he is kinda covering up the fact that fractional reserve banking is the problem. If there was no FRB, then borrowing money from a bank would not increase the money supply.

  3. He says that deflation is bad too, for the usual fallacy that people may wait a little while before spending money.or investing. What is the evidence for such a claim? Or that it hurts the economy in practice? Hazlitt’s book on inflation explains that deflation historically has been harmful only when it was introduced as a shock into the economy, such as a sudden return to the gold standard. Even then it was refusal of people to accept a drop in nominal wages and prices [of things they are selling] that did the harm, not the actual deflation. The reason deflation is “bad” is because the biggest debtor in the country, the govt, will lose money from it.

Other than that, there were some good points in that movie.

  1. His emphasis that inflation is bad. Most of the movie was devoted to that. In the USA the theme is always that inflation is good.

  2. His pointing out that inflation means the price of EVERYTHING goes up. Otherwise it’s not inflation.

  3. His putting the blame for inflation squarely where it belongs, on an increase in the money supply. As opposed to blaming the consumer, for example.