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by Zr40 1869 days ago
> Where else are people meant to store money?

Money isn't stored in other assets. It's transferred from the buyer of an asset to the seller. It doesn't cease to exist simply because you traded it for stocks (or gold or anything else). Now the seller has to deal with the consequences of holding the money you previously held. A rational trader factors in the costs of money when they price assets, therefore one doesn't avoid those costs by trading money for other assets.
2 comments
nostrademons 1869 days ago
Right, and so the seller then has to put that money back in the market in some other asset at marginally higher prices, lest they lose money to inflation holding it in cash (or fixed-denomination assets).

This is the natural consequence of negative real interest rates. With positive rates the infinite series representing the "discounted value of all future cash flows" converges to a single dollar value. With negative rates the series diverges: the "discounted value" of future cash flows is greater than their nominal value, simply because you're losing money with competing investments. The rational value of any investment that generates positive and predictable cash flows becomes infinite.

Right now the only thing holding a lid on equity valuations is the expectation that the Fed will eventually raise rates, and so cash flows from time periods > 2023 need to be discounted at positive rates. If that doesn't happen, or if they don't raise rates by more than the inflation rate at the time, things will go boom.

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thehappypm 1869 days ago
This is always what I think of when I think of cryptocurrencies.

You're not parking your money somewhere, you're giving it to someone else. Every time you buy BTC someone else is getting paid. Money goes in circles.

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mywittyname 1869 days ago
Two economists are sitting at a bar, one pulls out a checkbook and writes a check for $100,000,000 then hands it to the other economist. The second economist looks at the check, smiles, then hands it back.

The first economist calls the bartender over and orders a bottle of champagne. The bartender asks what the celebration is about, and the economist responds, "we just grew GDP by $200 million dollars."

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skybrian 1869 days ago
Sure, fraudulent transactions exist. The difficulty is figuring out how much it matters.
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