Maybe a stupid question, but if the velocity goes up, couldn't/wouldn't the Fed contract the supply?
It seems like having large supply is desirable/correct when velocity is low.
It seems like having large supply is desirable/correct when velocity is low.
The Fed's next step is to slow down this inflation, and they will do so by raising rates. The Fed's dot plots shows that they will reach the rate of the 30Y Treasury bill sometime around 2024, but with this data they might bring that up to 2023. This will, like every single other time they set the Fed Funds Rate above the 30YT, cause a recession 6 months afterwards, which will bring down the inflation pressures. Problem resolved?
That's totally standard, and not yet the true problem. The problem is after that. Once we reach that recession the Fed quickly drops the interest rate and that brings us out of the recession. But interest rates are already so low, we've already pumped so many dollars into the system, that it might not cut it. We might get cascading failures, we might get stuck in a depression. This might be the end of the long-term debt cycle.
Also in 2008, it looks like money velocity decreased during the recession (as it's been doing almost monotonically since the mid 90s). It looks like after the crash, velocity increased slightly, and indeed the supply contracted just slightly at basically the exact same time.
And doesn't whether that dollar is "destroyed" depend on why the borrower can't pay it? If it's because someone else got ≥ $1 richer off the borrower, then it seems to me like the supply of money in the economy as a whole hasn't actually gone down.