Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Value of Money

Ever wonder how more money gets created if resources stay constant.I think I had a brief insight today that may make sense. In sum it is that a forced supply of financial instruments, increases spending power, increases demand, and hence valuation of limited resources - and hence backward justifies the value of increased money.

To illustrate with 2 parallel examples. 1) Paper money and 2) Equities traded on a stock exchange. For paper money, there is an invisible hand of the federal government churning out notes and currency that the banks dispense with. It is not suddenly that people get higher wages, or everyone seems to have more money to spend. What happens then? Everyone wants a little more iof limited resources then, and no wonder the little resources become more expensive.
Money is issues against gold, but as you put out more money, sooner or later the gold too becomes expensive, and justifies the additonal liquidity.

Likewise with equity, every now and then companies more visibly split their stocks, issue bonuses and the like. The re-valuation initially spreads across the increased equity base. At the same time. the price per share falls into the buying power range for more investors, and suddenly people are buying more. With a little usual demandonmics, the value goes up again.

Applications of this insight - guess different for different people,
1) someone will keep churning out more cash to make the asset valuable, so buy more assets
2) there is no asset comparable to blue chip equity, as you can keep increasing liquidity there theoretically forever, which not the case with land, gold, diamonds or carbon emissions for that matter.

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