> The "money supply" you are talking about was not the primary driver in the last few years and there was robust demand for the treasury issuance.
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't believe we can be sure of that. The economy is extremely complex, ferreting out the impact of any one intervention is nearly impossible.
On the surface it seems very unlikely to me that printing trillions in new money and giving it to banks, businesses, and directly to every citizen had no impact on prices. The supply of money increased dramatically and the cost of money (interest rates) was also extremely low.
Beyond my hunch though, I haven't found any data that has clearly isolated the inflation out of the equation to be able to show that the price increases weren't driven by the new money at all.
The Fed is really not printing anything, and they have a lot of power to control money supply through open market operations. It is incredibly efficient when doing this, and can increase the cost of capital very quickly. But like you said, it is hard to come to a definite conclusion or come up with a proof.
The other parts of the equation that I mentioned are very hard for anyone to control.
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't believe we can be sure of that. The economy is extremely complex, ferreting out the impact of any one intervention is nearly impossible.
On the surface it seems very unlikely to me that printing trillions in new money and giving it to banks, businesses, and directly to every citizen had no impact on prices. The supply of money increased dramatically and the cost of money (interest rates) was also extremely low.
Beyond my hunch though, I haven't found any data that has clearly isolated the inflation out of the equation to be able to show that the price increases weren't driven by the new money at all.