Agreed, one of the pernicious problems we have is that the meanings are conflated, because that is how the govt reports inflation.

Let me backtrack a little bit more. The reason I made my mistake on lending payback as being deflationary is that in aggregate all money in our system is based on debt. No debts equals no money. In essence a loan is the monetization of your future earnings potential, backed by some asset as collateral. Treasury bills for instance are backed by nothing more than Congress’ future ability to tax.

I didn’t think it through enough because my main point was really about the weird strengthening of the US dollar which is perverse considering how our economy is behaving.