The Case Against Helicopter Money

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the latest financial crisis central banks in several countries have decided to apply non-conventional monetary policy measures. Other monetary authorities behaved more conventionally but conducted a very loose monetary policy anyway. The goal of the paper is to discuss threats and possible consequences of treating the money instrumentally (monetary easing, government financing by the central bank). The authorities tend to arbitrary reinforce just one function of money, a medium of exchange, in order to artificially increase the sales and production of goods and services while neglecting other major function: a store of value. Fast growing money aggregates, awareness that there is no limit for money creation, and ideas such as “helicopter money” stimulate the attempts to storage the wealth in different form, e.g. cryptocurrency. The remarks were formulated from the conventional and Islamic finance perspective. Statistical data come from the euro area, Poland, and Iran, where banking system is fully Islamic.