Central to Keynes’s theory is an understanding of bank money not just as a means of creating purchasing power for the purposes of exchange, but also as a store of value. When, after borrowing and investing, the holder of borrowed money makes profits or capital gains, she will face decisions about what to do with her surplus. Keynes argued that, like other holders of capital, her decision about where to place and for how long to hold her savings is determined first by a need for cash, for immediate or near-immediate use in purchasing goods and services (i.e. short-term ‘liquidity’); second, by what he called the precautionary motive: the desire for security as to the future equivalent of her cash; and third, by the speculative motive: the desire to secure gains by investing the money in projects and knowing better than the market what the future will bring.

[...] The outcome of low yields on government bonds is the massive inflation of property prices [...]