&gt; Lending does not necessarily encourage spending.<p>And we&#x27;re back to the old spending vs saving &amp; investment view of economic growth. I&#x27;m squarely in the Austrian camp on this, so I don&#x27;t really care about spending, especially if it&#x27;s fueled by government intervention to &quot;spur aggregate demand&quot;.<p>I disagree that you have to have inflation, especially when we talking about gold &amp; bitcoin. The past 100 years of economics has been tuned to a fiat money + fractional reserve banking + debt + inflation paradigm. Considering bitcoin within this framework doesn&#x27;t even make sense, as it will (probably) not be the currency of a whole economy.<p>Also, there is more to the story concerning the Fed&#x27;s balance sheet [1] and the link to inflation.<p>[1] file:&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;C:&#x2F;Users&#x2F;Clark&#x2F;Downloads&#x2F;market-outlook-2014-03-why-the-feds-4-trillion-balance-sheet-isnt-creating-inflation.pdf