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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Inflation, the cost of borrowing future money

Inflation causes the poor to be poorer and the rich to be richer. Cost of food and transportation have increased with time, and the cost of them will continue to increase as long as we are living in the world of borrowed money.

Future money, and lots of future money were borrowed to meet GDP growth expectations and create jobs for the people. US introduced quantitive easing to erase borrowed future money that cannot be repaid. By keeping interest rates low, they allowed rich corporations to become even richer because companies can now borrow money at rates close to zero.

Apple had $194 billion in cash, which is enough to buy 2 McDonald's corporation.
Source : http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/27/apple-now-has-194-billion-in-cash/#.39s1m0:e9Vj

More countries are either erasing debts or printing more money in the world today, and these polices have desirable results to improve the overall economy. However, these achievements have been successful at the expense of consumers which is the middle and low income bracket household. Things either became more expensive like food, transportation and services or cheaper like communications and electronics. Companies or small medium enterprises faced increased in costs which hopefully can be passed on to consumers or customers.

These scenarios are evident of the inflation structured economy today that we live in. And if we still keep our money in the bank, the value of our money could end up depreciating faster than we could imagine. A bowl of noodles now cost $3-4 may soon be $5-6 in two to 3 years time. MRT rides that cost $0.79 will soon be $1.

This is the cost of borrowing future money which affects us in an invisible way.