Quote from: Nefario on June 03, 2011, 12:17:40 PM

Who thinks what about Deflation

There are two schools of thought on deflation and inflation.
Keynesian economics, which favors government intervention and money supply inflation. This not surprisingly is the most popular school of thought with world governments (if someone told you to just print money and spend it you'd like them too).

This school not only supports inflation, but believes it to be essential to growth.

Then there is the Austrian school, which is is for a free market, against government intervention, and generally think inflation is bad and deflation is good. Again unsurprisingly these people are not popular in government circles around the world.

Nefario, there are two main schools of thought on inflation in economics (Keynesian vs. Real Business Cycle). The 'Austrian School' is a fringe group associated with radical libertarians, which is almost completely ignored in academia. Universities typically classify Austrian economics as a 'heterodox approach', i.e. very far from the mainstream. Given that this heading is meant to be a public face of bitcoin's position on deflation, I think it is unwise to mention the Austrian school.

Perhaps it would be better to just say 1) the effects of inflation and deflation are controversial in macroeconomics 2) the real value of bitcoin-denominated exchange is minuscule compared to that denominated in government-issued currencies. And, accordingly, that any macroeconomic effects associated with bitcoin's introduction will be negligible in magnitude.