What's the third biggest killer in America? It isn't cancer. It isn't heart attacks. It isn't car accidents, gun shot wounds or obesity.It is iatrogenic diseases. These are illnesses caused or made much worse by doctors in their attempts to cure patients.
It's a new word on me (learnt from my colleague Tim Price), but now I know it, I am finding uses for it all over the place. Modern monetary policy is effectively causing iatrogenic disease. It is designed to get rid of deflation. But as Tim points out in this week's , it is having exactly the opposite effect. By encouraging over investment and the misallocation of capital, and by keeping bad companies alive, super-low interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) are driving the oversupply of goods and services.
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