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Monday, 26 March 2012

Inflation-adjusting monetary items

Inflation-adjusting monetary items
 Only unstable money and other unstable monetary items´ real values are continuously being eroded by low inflation, high inflation and hyperinflation over time. Inflation has no effect on the real value of non–monetary items.

‘Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,’ per Milton Friedman.

Purchasing power of non monetary items does not change in spite of variation in national currency value.’

Gucenme, U. and Arsoy, A. P. (2005). Changes in financial reporting in Turkey, Historical Development of Inflation Accounting 1960 – 2005. Special Issue Accounting for the Global and the Local: The Case of Turkey. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Volume 20, Issue 5, July 2009, p. 568–590.

Deflation increases the real value of only unstable money and other unstable monetary items over time. Deflation has no effect on the real value of non–monetary items.

The entire money supply can be inflation–adjusted or deflation-adjusted on a daily basis in terms of a Daily Consumer Price Index or a monetized daily indexed unit of account during low and high inflation and deflation. This would be done in terms of a relatively stable foreign currency (normally the US Dollar) daily parallel rate or a daily Brazilian-style Unidade Real de Valor (URV) index during hyperinflation. Inflation-adjusting the entire money supply on a daily basis would remove the entire cost of inflation - not actual inflation - from the total money supply in the case of complete co-ordination (everybody doing it). According to the Banco Central de Chile 20 to 25 per cent of Chile´s broad M3 money supply is inflation–indexed daily (2011) in terms of the Unidad de Fomento which is a monetized daily indexed unit of account.

‘A more extended measure of money, as M2 or M3, includes inflation indexed assets, but they are expressed in Chilean pesos. In M3, those assets are roughly 20 to 25% of total.’ (Banco Central de Chile, 2011)

 Net monetary losses and gains are not calculated and accounted during low inflation in Chile.

Nicolaas Smith

Copyright (c) 2005-2012 Nicolaas J Smith. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.

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