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When The Money Multiplier falls below 1.0

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praxe posted on Thu, Mar 4 2010 11:45 PM

 

Here we have a chart of the Money Multiplier.  Can anyone explain exactly what is going on when it drops below 1?  I guess this is related to the enormous growth in excess reserves that are not being lent out.

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Esuric replied on Fri, Mar 5 2010 12:42 AM

Every additional dollar created leads to less than one dollar entering circulation. The chart says that It's around .8; so every additional dollar created will increase circulation by eighty cents. Basically, velocity (reciprocal of money demand) has crashed.

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Sits in reserve.

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I'm sorry but what exactly is "the money multiplier"?

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DD5 replied on Fri, Mar 5 2010 9:09 AM

praxe:
Here we have a chart of the Money Multiplier

With excess reserves pretty much at 0% before this crisis began, the real multiplier of the base money is a lot higher then what is shown in this graph.  I'm not sure I understand what they are showing here.

 Depending on the type of deposit, the required reserves was anywhere from 10% for demand deposits, and as little as almost 0% for saving deposits.  10% means roughly a multiplier of 1/0.1 =10.  

 

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Greg Mankiw explained this back in January: The Disappearing Money Multiplier.

Here's an interesting fact that you may not have seen yet. The M1 money multiplier just slipped below 1. So each $1 increase in reserves (monetary base) results in the money supply increasing by $0.95 (OK, so banks have substantially increased their holding of excess reserves while the M1 money supply hasn't changed by much).

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It shows we are back to 100% reserves and that there is no relationship between bank credit and bank reserves.

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