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The effect of bailing out SVB depositors on inflation is pretty much zero...



I would actually agree with you.

Although this is almost trivially true: any single gov spend inflation effect is 'pretty much zero'. That's not the same as 'free' though. All spend together adds up to at least 2-3% in good times.

... and it just went up by 0.4% last month: https://reason.com/2023/03/14/inflation-isnt-going-away/

yikes


I mean, yeah sure, it's trivially true that all spending by anyone in the economy adds some tiny portion of inflationary pressure.

That doesn't mean that the Fed making depositors' bank balances that already existed continue to exist (and mostly continue to stay in the bank) most of which is simply a payout from an insurance fund doesn't add less inflationary pressure per dollar than most other types of spending, that the number of dollars involved isn't an exceptionally tiny fraction of the economy or that a 0.25% rise in the interest rate wouldn't have several orders of magnitude more impact in the opposite direction.


> The effect of bailing out SVB depositors on inflation is pretty much zero...

Its probably strongly positive, in that the knock-on effects of letting them burn would be an economic meltdown that would rapidly reduce inflation.

The monetary effects of the additional net spending before considering that os probably minimal, though.


Not sure either that an economic meltdown is the sort of inflation reduction the Fed is looking for, or that SV startups getting a few percentage points haircut on their unspent investment capital would do that much damage to the wider economy. Even tech companies actually laying off staff hasn't had much effect on inflation




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