Does inflation equal more loans?
What is the relationship between inflation and interest rates? notes a relationship between inflation and interest rates that would suggest high inflation would imply higher interest rates that would mean less loans as money becomes more expensive in a sense. In contrast, in times of low inflation then rates may be low and thus there is a greater chance of people and businesses wanting loans. In terms of operations, banks are indifferent to inflation. Short rates except right before a recession or near-recession are always lower than long rates, regardless of inflation level, assuming no quotas or price controls. Banks produce credit by borrowing short to lend long, so as long as short rates are lower than long rates, they can be expected to produce loans, again assuming no quotas or price controls. In short, from the banks' perspective, inflation does not affect their desire to produce credit.
It seems from the Bernanke and pundits in general that there's an ideal inflation rate and it's not zero. When you reference that recessions bring prices down, I think I understand you, but recession does not mean deflation. In fact deflation is a rarity, not a common occurrence.  When you look at what compounding does, you see that a 3% inflation rate will double the cost of an item in 24 years. From 1975 to 2010, inflation was 4X as it ran well above 3% for a time. I chose that date as I was 13 at the time, and wasn't too aware of specific prices before that. So I've seen a pizza go from $3 to $12 during my life. I hope to live long enough to see it double again.  I think that it's hyperinflation that's an ongoing concern, but the controlled inflation as I just described is not detrimental, in fact it's preferable in some sense. For example, when I look at my 5% mortgage, it's 3.6% after tax, but with a 3% inflation rate, my cost is really .6%, as the remaining debt devalues over time and the house (in theory) goes up with inflation. On the other extreme, higher inflation, say 8%, starts to be detrimental, distorting spending behavior and bad for the system. I'd agree, inflation affects the value of the dollar you measure anything in. So, it makes your debt fade away at the same rate it eats away at dollar denominated assets. I'd suggest that one should also look at the tax effect of the debt or assets as well.  For example, my 3.5% mortgage costs me 2.625% after tax. But a 4% long term cap gain in stocks, costs me .6% in tax for a net 3.4%. Inflation is basically this:  Over time, prices go up! I will now address the 3 points you have listed. Suppose over a period of 10 years, prices have doubled.  Now suppose 10 years ago I earned $100 and bought a nice pair of shoes.  Now today because prices have doubled I would have to earn $200 in order to afford the same pair of shoes.  Thus if I want to compare my earnings this year to 10 years ago, I will need to adjust for the price of goods going up.  That is, I could say that my $100 earnings 10 years ago is the same as having earned $200 today, or alternatively I could say that my earnings of $200 today is equivalent to having earned $100 10 years ago. This is a difficult question because a car is a depreciating asset, which means the real value of the car will go down in value over time. Let us suppose that inflation doesn't exist and the car you bought for $100 today will depreciate to $90 after 1 year (a 10% depreciation). But because inflation does exist, and all prices will be 0.5% higher in 1 years time, we can calculate the true selling price of the car 1 in year as follows: 0.5% of $90 = 0.005*90 = $0.45 Therefore the car will be $90 + $0.45 = $90.45 in 1 years time. If inflation is low, then the repayments do not get much easier to pay back over time because wages have not risen by as much.  Similarly the value of your underlying asset will not increase in value by as much. However as compensation, the interest rates on loans are usually lower when inflation is lower. Therefore generally it is better to get a loan in times of high inflation rather than low inflation, however it really depends on how the much the interest rates are relative to the inflation rate. "First, a clarification. No assets are immune to inflation, apart from inflation-indexed securities like TIPS or inflation-indexed gilts (well, if held to maturity, these are at least close). Inflation causes a decline in the future purchasing power of a given dollar1 amount, and it certainly doesn't just affect government bonds, either. Regardless of whether you hold equity, bonds, derivatives, etc., the real value of those assets is declining because of inflation, all else being equal. For example, if I invest $100 in an asset that pays a 10% rate of return over the next year, and I sell my entire position at the end of the year, I have $110 in nominal terms. Inflation affects the real value of this asset regardless of its asset class because those $110 aren't worth as much in a year as they are today, assuming inflation is positive. An easy way to incorporate inflation into your calculations of rate of return is to simply subtract the rate of inflation from your rate of return. Using the previous example with inflation of 3%, you could estimate that although the nominal value of your investment at the end of one year is $110, the real value is $100*(1 + 10% - 3%) = $107. In other words, you only gained $7 of purchasing power, even though you gained $10 in nominal terms. This back-of-the-envelope calculation works for securities that don't pay fixed returns as well. Consider an example retirement portfolio. Say I make a one-time investment of $50,000 today in a portfolio that pays, on average, 8% annually. I plan to retire in 30 years, without making any further contributions (yes, this is an over-simplified example). I calculate that my portfolio will have a value of 50000 * (1 + 0.08)^30, or $503,132. That looks like a nice amount, but how much is it really worth? I don't care how many dollars I have; I care about what I can buy with those dollars.  If I use the same rough estimate of the effect of inflation and use a 8% - 3% = 5% rate of return instead, I get an estimate of what I'll have at retirement, in today's dollars. That allows me to make an easy comparison to my current standard of living, and see if my portfolio is up to scratch. Repeating the calculation with 5% instead of 8% yields 50000 * (1 + 0.05)^30, or $21,6097. As you can see, the amount is significantly different. If I'm accustomed to living off $50,000 a year now, my calculation that doesn't take inflation into account tells me that I'll have over 10 years of living expenses at retirement. The new calculation tells me I'll only have a little over 4 years. Now that I've clarified the basics of inflation, I'll respond to the rest of the answer.  I want to know if I need to be making sure my investments span multiple currencies to protect against a single country's currency failing. As others have pointed out, currency doesn't inflate; prices denominated in that currency inflate. Also, a currency failing is significantly different from a prices denominated in a currency inflating. If you're worried about prices inflating and decreasing the purchasing power of your dollars (which usually occurs in modern economies) then it's a good idea to look for investments and asset allocations that, over time, have outpaced the rate of inflation and that even with the effects of inflation, still give you a high enough rate of return to meet your investment goals in real, inflation-adjusted terms. If you have legitimate reason to worry about your currency failing, perhaps because your country doesn't maintain stable monetary or fiscal policies, there are a few things you can do. First, define what you mean by ""failing."" Do you mean ceasing to exist, or simply falling in unit purchasing power because of inflation? If it's the latter, see the previous paragraph. If the former, investing in other currencies abroad may be a good idea. Questions about currencies actually failing are quite general, however, and (in my opinion) require significant economic analysis before deciding on a course of action/hedging. I would ask the same question about my home's value against an inflated currency as well. Would it keep the same real value. Your home may or may not keep the same real value over time. In some time periods, average home prices have risen at rates significantly higher than the rate of inflation, in which case on paper, their real value has increased. However, if you need to make substantial investments in your home to keep its price rising at the same rate as inflation, you may actually be losing money because your total investment is higher than what you paid for the house initially. Of course, if you own your home and don't have plans to move, you may not be concerned if its value isn't keeping up with inflation at all times. You're deriving additional satisfaction/utility from it, mainly because it's a place for you to live, and you spend money maintaining it in order to maintain your physical standard of living, not just its price at some future sale date. 1) I use dollars as an example. This applies to all currencies." "The classic definition of inflation is ""too much money chasing too few goods.""  Within a tight range, say 1-3%, inflation is somewhat benign.  There's a nice inflation widget at The Inflation Calculator which helps me see that an item costing $1000 in 1975 would now (2010) be about $4000, and $1000 from 1984 till now, just over $2000. I chose those two years to make a point. First, I am 48, I graduated college in 1984, so in my working life I've seen the value of the dollar drop by half. On the other hand it only took 9 years from 75-84 to see a similar amount of inflation occur.  I'd suggest that the 26 year period is far more acceptable than the 9. Savers should be aware of their real return vs what was a result of inflation. I'm not incensed either way but logically have to acknowledge the invisible tax of inflation. I get a (say) 6% return, pay 2% in tax, but I'm not ahead by 4%, 3% may be lost to inflation. On the flip side, my mortgage is 3.5%, after taxes that's 2.625%, but less than 0% after (long term) inflation. So as a debtor, I am benefiting by the effect of inflation on what I owe.  Interesting also to hear about deflation as we've grown used to it in the case of electronics but little else. Perhaps the iPad won't drop in price, but every year it will gain features and competitors will keep the tablet market moving. Yet people still buy these items.  Right now, there's not enough spending. I'd suggest that, good financial advice aside, people as a whole need to start spending to get the economy moving. The return of some inflation would be a barometer of that spending starting to occur." The worst part of government induced tuition inflation wasn't even the GI Bill. Although I'm sure that started it a bit. It really took off in the late 1970s / 1980 with the establishment of the Department of Education and the Sallie Mae loan clearing house. There's a massive inflection point in historical inflation adjusted tuition prices right around 1980, when those were established. No coincidence.      Also, you know whats worse than the **government** getting in the housing-price-inflation business? The freaking **central bank** getting in on the housing-price-inflation business.      https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/quarterly-balance-sheet-developments-report.htm      https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/quarterly_balance_sheet_developments_report_201708.pdf      The federal reserve holds $4.4 T in total assets. That is the sole source of the entire money supply of the United States Dollar. It does not come from anywhere else. Of course, you get money velocity and money multipliers after that, but this is the origin. Of that $4.4 T, they hold $2.4 T in US Treasury securities. Ok, that's fine. That's the whole point of the federal reserve. They control the money supply through buying / selling (letting mature / redeem) US government securities. But wait, hold up, what the heck happened to the other $2.0 T in assets ... um, where did those go? There are some other assets, but the next largest ... the federal reserve owns $1.7 T in mortgage backed securities.      Holy ... effing ... sheeeeeeeet. What in the actual f*** is the central bank doing buying mortgage backed securities? That absolutely, positively, is **NOT** monetary policy. That shit is fiscal policy, which the federal reserved is **NOT** supposed to be engaging in.      And now you know why housing prices are even more effed up than tuition prices. There's a difference between physical currency and money (For example a bank may only hold only a small percentage of total deposits as cash that it's customers can withdraw).   I'm not sure which you're referring to, but either way you should read  about inflation. Inflation is not applicable in the said example. You are better off paying 300 every month as the balance when invested will return you income. I believe it goes a little something like this: During period of inflation, all boats rise. Everyone get's richer, and gain control of more physical assets. During periods of depression, debts are being called due by those who gave out the loans (these few powerful men) that can't be paid, and so foreclosures and the like occur, giving the creditors control of the actual physical assets.  Basically you have to track physical assets instead of financial ones to see how the boom and busts are beneficial to the wealthy. That sounds like bunk too me. Even if it does, the total number of loans isn't going to be a major factor in your credit score. I wouldn't worry about it unless you have other reasons to consolidate the loans. For example, Government student loans can introduce risk into your finances in that they are difficult to dismiss as part of a bankruptcy if that ever becomes necessary. What the comments above say is true, but one more thing is there. FD rates are directly proportional to loan rates. However, banks make money because loan rates will always be higher than FD rates. Typically in a developed / developing economy if there is high overall inflation, then it means everything will rise including property/real estate. The cost of funds is low [too much money chasing too few goods causes inflation] which means more companies borrow money cheaply and more business florish and hence the stock market should also go up.   So if you are looking at a situation where industry is doing badly and the inflation is high, then it means there are larger issues. The best bet would be Gold and parking the funds into other currency. It's misleading news. Comparing debt levels in nominal terms is completely pointless over a period of more than a few months.  The article you responded to quite literally quoted extracts from the article you subsequently posted and explained why they were misleading or incorrect. I believe there are two ways new money is created: My favorite description of this (money creation) comes from Chris Martenson: the video is here on Youtube. And yes, I believe both can create inflation. In fact this is what happened in the US between 2004 and 2007: increasing loans to households to buy houses created an inflation of home prices. "Vitalik has mentioned this in a comment but I think it ought to be expanded upon: Companies that aren't already penny stocks really don't stand to gain anything from trying to prevent short interest.  Short selling does not inherently lower the stock price - not any more so than any other kind of selling.  When somebody shorts a stock, it's simply borrowed from another investor's margin; as long as it's not a naked short resulting in an FTD (Failure To Deliver) then it does not add any ""artificial"" selling pressure. In fact, shorting can actually drive the price up in the long term due to stops and margin calls.  Not a guarantee, of course, but if a rally occurs then a high short interest can cause a cascade effect from the short ""squeeze"", resulting in an even bigger rally than what would have occurred with zero short interest.  Many investors actually treat a high short interest as a bullish signal. Compare with margin buying - essentially the opposite of short selling - which has the opposite effect.  If investors buy stocks on margin, then if the value of that stock decreases too rapidly they will be forced to sell, which can cause the exact same cascade effect as a short interest but in the opposite direction.  Shorting is (in a sense) evening out the odds by inflating the buying pressure at lower stock prices when the borrowers decide to cover and take profits. Bottom line is that, aside from (illegal) insider trading, it doesn't do businesses any good to try to manipulate their stock price or any trading activity.  Yes, a company can raise capital by selling additional common shares, but a split really has no effect on the amount of capital they'd be able to raise because it doesn't change the actual market cap, and a dilution is a dilution regardless of the current stock price.  If a company's market cap is $1 billion then it doesn't matter if they issue 1 million shares at $50.00 each or 10 million shares at $5.00 each; either way it nets them $50 million from the sale and causes a 5% dilution, to which the market will react accordingly. They don't do it because there'd be no point."