James Grant: “The Money Printers” (Forbes): “Inflation, as defined by the great Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), is an unwarranted rise in the money supply—more exactly, a rise in the supply of money not offset by a rise in the demand for money. Rising prices are a symptom of inflation, not the thing itself. Thinking as the master thought helps to clarify the monetary situation. Persistent growth in money and credit over the past several decades was inflationary. Still, such growth was only deemed inflationary when, as in the 1970s, the prices of goods and services went up. When, as in the 1990s, the prices of financial assets went up (and up), that was a bull market.”
