Here is a graph stolen from Market Realist. Ten year inflation adjusted bond sold by Treasury come to about $250 billion a year, less than 15% of the total debt sales needed to rollover .just the $12 trillion in public debt (not including social security). The term structure of the US debt is about six years.
The total debt help is greater than our GDP, (including social security). What happens if most of the ten year bonds went into the TIPS market over a six year period? Well, the TIPS market is an insurance policy to protect the normal ten year bond from inflation )or deflation) effects. So, the yield would simply rise to reflect the risk adjusted yields, since all ten year bonds would then be protected. But the most likely scenario is continued deflation over the next six years. No matter, the combined TIPS and constant maturity yields will contain risk adjustment.
There is no way to fudge these figures. They are taken straight from the FRED site. Currently, the last five years is the first time in 40 years that all these lines tend to converge. The implicit price deflator, which measures total inflation, is near zero as we see the real and nominal GDP converge. It is not rising anytime soon, we are price accurate, inflation.deflation zero.
Brad Delong's point is that money is cheap, not so. It is simply priced right at the moment, and will remain priced right when adjusted for price distortion.
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