[HN Gopher] The Hyperinflation Gallery ___________________________________________________________________ The Hyperinflation Gallery Author : classichasclass Score : 113 points Date : 2022-09-18 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (lcamtuf.coredump.cx) (TXT) w3m dump (lcamtuf.coredump.cx) | eth0up wrote: | I think this could be solved with a hard liquor backed currency. | Not some boring metal or fiat hypnosis, but something of | intrinsic, unwavering value. It would put things in perspective. | And the sense of security from knowing you've got twenty bottles | of whiskey in your pocket would assuage the anxiety of knowing | you'll never retire or own a house. | | It might also give us an excuse for our society, which would have | some real value too. | | ONE DOLLAR IN LIQUOR POURABLE TO THE BEARER ON DEMAND | forinti wrote: | I recall reading somewhere that the price of wine in gold is | pretty much the same it was in Roman times, so this might | actually be a good idea. | | Maybe we could adopt a basket of different spirits as a metric | so that one bad harvest of a specific crop doesn't affect the | currency so much. | 20after4 wrote: | I've heard from first-hand account that during Serbian | hyperinflaction in the early 1990s, the value of a bottle of | vodka was the common denomination of exchange. | nostrademons wrote: | Small bottles of alcohol have historically become currency | during instances of war and/or hyperinflation - there are | reports of this during both the Bosnian war and WW2. | | The problem with it long-term is that it's a deflationary | currency. Liquor gets consumed; once you pay a drunk with a | bottle of alcohol, he tends to drink it and take it out of | circulation. This means the value of alcohol goes up as the | crisis continues, which means people have an incentive to hoard | rather than circulate it, which means that it eventually loses | its utility as a currency. | xani_ wrote: | If value grows, acquiring materials to make it gets cheaper | and cheaper so it would be self-regulating. | SkyMarshal wrote: | I'm not sure about that. It's relatively easy to make and | doesn't require any particularly scarce materials. It just | takes some time to ferment. But the alcohol industry is very | good at supplying as much as people will buy. Seems more | equilibritory than either deflationary or inflationary. | ravenstine wrote: | Not for brews like beer and cider, but special materials | and skill _are_ required for distilled spirits, especially | steel and copper, the latter of which already having a low | level of scarcity. If Boozecoin mining rigs become popular | (again), the price of pipe at Home Depot would at least | quadruple. | nostrademons wrote: | That's another problem for it: for a functioning currency, | you really don't want something that's easy for people to | "counterfeit" (make themselves). The ideal currency has a | stable supply; can only be minted by a monetary authority | that does not have a vested interest in spending it itself; | is very difficult to destroy; is not perishable or hard to | store; and can easily be exchanged in variable | denominations. Alcohol is relatively good at the last two | points, which makes it attractive during times of crisis | when the central monetary authority breaks down, but it's | not really durable as a currency. | iseanstevens wrote: | But isn't it its own mineable (fermentable) currency? | | Perhaps that it has intrinsic value, can be consumed, and | more can be made would cancel out inflation/deflation at some | equilibrium point? | eth0up wrote: | Well I was almost finished designing the base note featuring | a florid faced, beaming Nixon for the obverse and parachuting | dodo bird clutching a bundle of wilting tulips on the | reverse. | | If not alcohol, what then? | revolvingocelot wrote: | Don't throw that design out, we're, uh, _still_ on for | this. I 've got some good news regarding the production of | alcohol -- I suspect that the government will actually find | this easier than printing money. | | The challenge will be in how to ensure that all that new | alcohol doesn't end up in the already-well-stocked liquor | cabinets of the rich. | 13of40 wrote: | Seems like you could map it to something that expires on its | own, like beer, to prevent hoarding. | block_dagger wrote: | Is that you, Bukowski? | forgotmypw17 wrote: | This was one of the most stable currencies in USSR and early | post-USSR. | christophilus wrote: | Prohibition II brings about a deflationary spiral and ushers | the world into Great Depression II. | revolvingocelot wrote: | "I do not know with what weapons World War III will be | fought, but World War II-II will be fought with ballerinas | and hangovers." - Albert Einstein | cm2187 wrote: | The beauty of all money being electronic is that it will make it | practical to have an hyper-inflation. Which given how | irresponsible the central banks and governements are is only a | matter of time. | messe wrote: | Only as long as the central banks don't run into integer | overflow (or poorly implemented bigint algorithms bringing | trading to a near standstill) | cm2187 wrote: | Well, we all know it's all COBOL. I was born too late to know | the answer, I am only in my 40s. | mtoner23 wrote: | Are they really so irresponsible? the past 50 years has been a | period of incredible competence in central banking all things | considered. | cm2187 wrote: | The first 30 of the past 50 years you mean. | ur-whale wrote: | > All but one of the documented episodes of hyperinflation | occurred in the last 100 years. | | But fear not, many more episodes are being produced as we speak, | the story is alive and well. | dvh wrote: | Was Poland ever part of Soviet? | fennecfoxen wrote: | Not _officially_. In practice, it might as well have been. | Likewise East Germany. | varjag wrote: | While they certainly were dominated and dictated by USSR, | neither belonged culturally. Neither was as stiff with | sexuality for instance; they didn't have collectivization in | the earnest and understandably there was no cult of war in | DDR other than in token solidarity with occupying Soviet | troops. | Turing_Machine wrote: | > While they certainly were dominated and dictated by USSR, | neither belonged culturally. | | Hmm... that seems more like a distinction without a | difference. | | Though dominated by Russians (mostly... Stalin was a | Georgian), the USSR was made up of over 100 different | nationalities with widely varying languages and cultures. | varjag wrote: | Yes and you couldn't use all those fine languages for | anything else than attending a folk festival. It was | Russian-language monoculture in every aspect of your | living (source: lived there). Certainly not so in | satellite states. Besides you waved off my examples and | these already were enormous cultural distance. | hef19898 wrote: | No, not even close. Those were sovereign countries under | communist single party rule and allied with the USSR. | Ukraine, for exampke, was a sovereign Soviet Republic as part | of the USSR, just as Russia was. | | Totally different things. | badpun wrote: | > Those were sovereign countries under communist single | party rule and allied with the USSR. | | They were countries conquered and occupied by USSR troops, | with USSR military bases in them to guarantee obedience. | There were local rulers, sure, but major decisions were | consulted with Moscow. Many decisions just were out of | question, because it was obvious that Moscow would not | approve and it may end in a military intervention (as in | happened in Hungary and Czech Republic). So no, I would not | describe them as "sovereign countries". The proper term is | something like "puppet state". | fzzt wrote: | "Allied" in the sense of having a USSR-installed puppet | government propped up by the massive presence of Soviet | troops. This was a part of the concessions made by the West | to Stalin, not an expression of the will of Polish or | German people. | KaiserPro wrote: | I'm not sure if you are being factious or not. | | I know its not trendy, but its probably easier to think of | the eastern bloc countries as colonies of the USSR, just as | india, egypt, and the african nations were to the UK. | | Sure, on paper they were sovereign, and they certianly had | a government made up of people from that country. But they | were a colony. | yongjik wrote: | Interesting, I wonder how many of those 100,000 $(currency) bills | are associated with hyperinflation vs. regular run-of-the-mill | inflation over a very long time. | | South Korea has 50,000 KRW bills (= about $36 these days), but | its currency has been pretty stable in the past 40+ years. | llanowarelves wrote: | And each time they think (or get the citizens to think) they can | escape the natural laws of the universe, money printing causing | no inflation. | | "It won't happen here!" | | It's not us doing money printing.. it's uh.. COVID, uh.. the war, | uh.. Climate change, uh.. corporate greed. | pessimizer wrote: | They should have learned from the hyperinflation in the US that | resulted from the vast money printing that happened after the | 2008 property bubble burst. I know that inflation for the next | decade was sub-2%, but if you think that's low, you're just | showing your privilege. You can't dodge gravity. | hef19898 wrote: | Hyperinflation is at least double digits month over month for | a considerable stretch of time, arguably even more than that. | Turkey comes to mind. The Western world is incredibly far | from that and was nowhere close to it in 2008. | pessimizer wrote: | /s | poisonarena wrote: | what makes hacker news appealing is the very few reddit | style, low effort comments. You should explain your | viewpoint instead of this cringy /s business, everyone | would be richer for it | pessimizer wrote: | You mistook the /s for an attack on the comment above it, | when it was actually a completion of my own grandparent | comment. There was not inflation, even when some | inflation was desired, after an almost inconceivable | amount of money printing. | | I know it's my own fault for thinking of Poe's Law as a | target rather than a pitfall. Sadly, for me | satire/sarcasm isn't good unless the target of it | sometimes can't tell that it is satire. It's evidence | that I've treated them fairly. | | edit: note that cm2187 understood that, and formulated a | direct, thoughtful reply. | | edit: also note (although you can't see it) that after I | explained the "/s" wasn't an attack but an affirmation of | the reply that told the truth about hyperinflation, that | it wasn't a goldbugging Libertarian smirk, the upvotes | started disappearing. Poe achieved. | pessimizer wrote: | To be dead honest, and not trying to insult anyone, in | real life when I assert two contradictory things within | two short sentences about any subject, the people who are | listening to me who agree with those sentences | immediately start to make their case to me why those two | statements aren't contradictory. | | It's only on the internet where I can assume that people | will show up who really think that I believe that | stubbornly low <2% inflation is hyperinflation, and | attempt to excoriate or support me. | kortilla wrote: | The US hasn't ever had hyperinflation. | Turing_Machine wrote: | It was technically before the US was officially founded | (counting from the adoption of the Constitution), but the | Continental currency printed by the Continental Congress | during the Revolutionary War was inflated to such a degree | that a banknote in 1781 had only 1/40 of its original value | in 1776, and was finally redeemable at only 1% of its face | value in the 1790s, thus leading to the expression "Not | worth a Continental". | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency#Conti | n... | | Edit: tried to clarify wording. In 1781, a banknote of a | specific denomination was worth only 1/40th of what the | same banknote was worth in 1776. | cm2187 wrote: | Because of the way it was introduced (in the financial | system), there was inflation, it created an asset bubble. | Asset managers, hedge fund managers, VC investors got rich, | and the cost base of this population (prime real estate, | restaurants in city centres, tuition fees) inflated too. | That's not captured in CPI indices. Part of it was also | neutralised through massive liquidity requirements imposed on | banks, and the multiplier effect of banks was also killed | with capital ratios / forcing banks to deleverage. But that's | done now and the said requirements aren't increasing anymore. | | What changed with the covid money printing is that it was | distributed directly in people's pockets. Also its scale and | pace dwarfed the previous 10 years of QE. | | I have no good explanation for Powell to have kept printing | money like there was no tomorrow after Feb 2021, after the | first >7% inflation prints. I suspect he must have made a | deal with Biden to let the inflation go (helped Biden's | policies) in exchange for renewing his mandate. The ECB is | run by a lawyer who probably had to look up on wikipedia the | definition of inflation. | pessimizer wrote: | I don't know that the inflation of luxury goods is a bad | thing, because that's going to trickle down. It's the | damage to (inflation of) housing, for me, that begs for | intervention. | fennecfoxen wrote: | Eh, we're not at serious risk of hyperinflation here. We are at | risk of regular old plain vanilla inflation, which is | adequately obnoxious and harms real wages plenty. | | As a net debtor, I might see see a 50% fall in the real value | of my mortgage in 5-7 years at current inflation rates, if the | politicians are feckless enough about it ("Milton Friedman | isn't in charge any more," Biden tells me.) I seriously doubt I | will see it in a month (the threshold cited in TFA). | llanowarelves wrote: | Yes the US is the least bad for now. No disagreement there. | | But these same dynamics, just more extreme, have plagued all | less lucky people each and every time. | | There are European families who have been through multiple | hyperinflationary events in the last century, and couldn't | convince their kids that it could happen again. Then, it did. | | And it's always smoke and mirrors on the population (begging | for more money printing) as to the cause of what's happening. | There are some smart ones who plan ahead. | ajross wrote: | > which is adequately obnoxious and harms real wages plenty. | | That's not historically correct. Wages generally track | inflation well, and are often (and are right now) a leading | indicator. | | What gets people upset about inflation is that it hurts | lenders, not workers. | seibelj wrote: | The only reason you want this is because tax payers subsidize | your mortgage (assuming standard fixed-rate US mortgage). No | other country offers this, and it's clearly a handout to the | upper middle class. In a free market your mortgage rate would | rise with inflation, or to get a fixed rate ( _for 30 years!_ | ) you would have to agree to a rate far above current | inflation. | sofixa wrote: | > (assuming standard fixed-rate US mortgage). No other | country offers this | | Fixed rate mortgages are the norm in multiple EU countries | (i have one in France and it's pretty much the only | option). | xani_ wrote: | here in Poland you can freeze the rate for 5 years and | that's it ;/ | cwalv wrote: | The home ownership rate in the US is > 65%; it seems | unlikely that this correlates well with "upper middle | class", by any reasonable definition. A more interesting | metric would be the percentage of people that benefit from | the deduction and gov guarantees at some point in their | life; I'd bet it's > 90%. | seibelj wrote: | It has to do with the absolute size of the mortgage. | Fixed rates go as high as $770k borrowed. You have to be | well-off to carry a $770k mortgage, and the value of this | subsidy to that type of borrower is unneeded. | cwalv wrote: | I believe it's possible to get a fixed rate "jumbo" loan | for even more than that, but since they're "non- | conforming" they can't be sold to fanny/freddy, and so | the banks take on the full risk of these loans. For | conforming loans, the limit in most areas is $647k [1], | which has risen substantially in recent years (along with | broader housing cost inflation). Not adjusting for HCOL | areas would effectively be blocking lower income people | from moving into these (arguably) "higher-mobility" | areas. | | [1] https://www.fhfa.gov/mobile/Pages/public-affairs- | detail.aspx... | nostrademons wrote: | There's no cap to the amount of cash borrowed on a fixed- | rate mortgage. Bay Area jumbo loans regularly top $2.5M, | and during the 2020-2021 period, they had sub-3% fixed | interest rates. The big difference between jumbo & | conforming loans is that jumbo loans cannot be packaged | off and securitized by Fannie & Freddie, and so they are | largely kept on the originating financial institution's | books. | | The reason fixed mortgage rates have been below inflation | recently is because the financial industry (bond buyers | and mortgage underwriters, at least) have largely bought | the Fed's "transitory" narrative. A 3% mortgage remains | profitable if inflation runs at 8% for a year and then | returns to 2%; it becomes very unprofitable if inflation | stays at 8%. The reason mortgage rates have climbed so | much in the last couple months is because the | "transitory" narrative has basically collapsed, and the | bond markets are now starting to price an extended period | of high inflation into the rates they charge. | seibelj wrote: | It's not that the interest is higher now! It's that it's | fixed for 30 years no matter what the interest rate | environment is! Plus it can be paid off early and | refinanced when it suits the borrower! | | I don't know how more clearly I can state why this is a | glaring subsidy for the rich. I'm sure in a free market | these would just appear by themselves /s | nostrademons wrote: | My point is that fixed-rate jumbo loans are not a | taxpayer subsidy, they're a _banking_ subsidy. The bank | is left holding the bag for existing jumbo loans when | interest rates move against them. | | There is some historical validity to the point that | fixed-rate mortgages existed because of taxpayer | subsidies. The creation of the FHA during the New Deal, | and Fannie-Mae shortly after that, basically jumpstarted | the practice. But there's a difference between | jumpstarting the a market and continued subsidy of it. | The existence of jumbo loans is an indication that even | without taxpayer subsidies, fixed-rate mortgages still | exist, presumably because the expectation of price | stability means that private institutions don't think | that the risk of interest rate variability is _that_ | great (jumbo mortgage borrowers usually pay about 0.5% | more, so that 's the implied risk premium). This can | change during times of high price variability - my | parents mortgage was 13.5% back in 1978, because expected | inflation was about that. But that also indicates that | interest rate risk is primarily absorbed by the private | markets, and taxpayer subsidies play a relatively small | part in it. | cjbgkagh wrote: | You have to re-weight by the value of the housing. | checkyoursudo wrote: | > tax payers subsidize your mortgage | | How do taxpayers subsidize fixed-rate mortgages in the US? | seibelj wrote: | The government guarantees them. Banks would never offer | this product otherwise. | cortesoft wrote: | The government does not guarantee mortgages. | dragonwriter wrote: | The overt purpose for the money printing is to increase | inflation beyond the level it would be without it. Essentially | no one has the delusion you discuss. | llanowarelves wrote: | Yes, supposed to be a couple percent -- but you have a | significant number of people who think that you can simply | "QE" a lot money (40% of all existing etc) and not have | significant inflation, and any price increases are purely the | result of corporate greed (as if they weren't always trying | to charge more, they were less greedy sometimes??), supply | chains, whatever. Mainstream articles telling normal people | this. | rmah wrote: | They think that because that's what happened. The Fed | pushed out $4T of QE and inflation barely budged for over a | decade (after 2008/2009 recession). It took a global | pandemic + a land war in Europe to bring on substantial | inflation. | | I remember when the Fed started doin QE in 2009. I thought, | "my god, pushing this much money into the economy will lead | to high inflation!"... except, it didn't. Then they did QE2 | and again, I thought, "for sure, THIS time inflation will | spike up!" Except it didn't. Then QE3 in 2012... | | Call me slow, but it wasn't until that point that I started | to seriously re-examine my mental model about how | macroeconomics works. But at least I could admit to being | wrong. | sofixa wrote: | > It's not us doing money printing.. it's uh.. COVID, uh.. the | war, uh.. Climate change, uh.. corporate greed | | If you think a pandemic (and policies to combat its effects) | and a war including some of the main exporters of foodstuffs | and energy don't impact the world markets and increase prices | worldwide (inflation), it's just willful ignorance pursuing a | (stupid) agenda at this point. | jbay808 wrote: | A loss of production will of course result in lost wealth, | but that can manifest as any combination of an increase in | prices (account balances constant) or a decrease in account | balances (prices constant). | | For example if the government taxed enough money out of the | system, prices would not increase (but stuff would be less | affordable because you have less money to buy it with). | | There's no getting around the increased scarcity, but the | increased prices are in some sense a choice. | janandonly wrote: | From the end of the article: But the most | surprising realization? All but one of the documented episodes of | hyperinflation occurred in the last 100 years. | | I feel that with all the QE going on right now, we might soon add | major currencies to this list. | mtoner23 wrote: | What QE? we are in an era of quantative tightening right now | actually. | octoberfranklin wrote: | Before departing, Mr. Horse left a note saying to close the | barn door. | bee_rider wrote: | I'm curious how surprising this really is. I mean I imagine | most of the documented anythings have happened in the last 100 | years, because documentation of everything has gotten so much | better over the last 100 years. | | Not to mention, how do you have hyperinflation with gold bars | and barter? | chrisco255 wrote: | We have pretty good documentation on the performance of | currencies over the past 500-2000 years. It is usually of | historical note when an entire nation's economy collapses as | a result of hyperinflation. | dragonwriter wrote: | > We have pretty good documentation on the performance of | currencies over the past 500-2000 years. | | Not "Pretty good" enough to detect hyperinflation by the | definition at issue (50%+ monthly inflation.) Before | regular, systematic, and frequent collection of data for | price indexes, we have good enough data to make wide-range | estimates of inflation over intervals of years to decades, | in the best cases, but hyperinflation (whether or not it | produces collapse of currency) doesn't continue long enough | to show up in that, and also hyperinflation tends to | correlate with conditions which reduce the availability and | survivability of data. (The author of the article here | notes a data problem with Yugoslavia in the late 20th | century, for instance.) | Stamp01 wrote: | Oh. I thought this was a different type of inflation gallery. | | This is still cool, though. | XorNot wrote: | For whatever reason when I saw this I thought it was going to be | an archive of people's predictions of imminent hyperinflation in | the West (still hasn't happened guys). | aidenn0 wrote: | It's not hyperinflation by any means, but it is interesting to me | that when federal reserve notes were first issued, there was a | $100 bill. That would be roughly $3000 today, and yet many places | to this day won't accept bills larger than a $20 and the US has | declined to print larger bills due to a worry of large | denominations utility in crime. | Turing_Machine wrote: | $100 bills are still made, though you're right that there may | be reluctance to accept them. | | There were bills much larger than $100 at one time, but those | were mainly used for things like, e.g. settling accounts | between banks in the days before electronic transfers. The | largest ever made was a $100,000 gold certificate. | thriftwy wrote: | Not only they are made but they are a staple of savings and | exchange in a range of countries from Argentine all the way | to North Korea. | adventured wrote: | All major retailers - that includes Target, Walmart, CVS, | Walgreens, Costco, Kroger, BestBuy - will accept $100 bills. | They might occasionally get annoyed at needing to request | change, to break the $100, from a floor manager. The parent | comment is wrong on that point. | eloff wrote: | Just as crazy is that we still have the penny. Worth less than | the metal it's made out of. If you see it in the street, you | leave it there. When you get home you empty the change from | your pockets, and the pennies just end up taking up space in a | drawer somewhere. Not worth enough to even bother counting to | change at the bank. | eth0up wrote: | Pre 1983 pennies are, I think, worth 2-3 cents in copper. The | value fluctuates with copper spot price, so this could go up | or down. | roomey wrote: | Terry Pratchett did a piece on this in his book, "making | money". | | A scam artist was asked to take over the capital city's | rotten central bank, which contained the mint. | | He made the point that these little coins cost more to make | than they were worth, and what was the point? In this case | they had a coin that was a tenth of a penny I think. | | Turns out the point was when you didn't have a lot of money, | these coins mattered. They could buy you a not so rotten | apple core on the right street. | | I think the point was; life is a lot different when you are | poor, and that's when cents matter. | thrown_22 wrote: | The penny doesn't really buy you a rotten apple core in the | US today. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | I don't leave it there, because it's a pretty coin. | aidenn0 wrote: | If I could, I would eliminate the penny, nickel, _and_ dime. | In terms of value, the dime is a bit iffy, but having to make | change with a combination of quarters and dimes would be | rather unpleasant, and now that consumer price inflation is | going again, the dime should be on its way out anyways. | [deleted] | dllthomas wrote: | If memory serves, when we got rid of the half-penny it was | worth more than a modern quarter. | | ... memory of the time I looked it up and did the | calculation, not memory of the event, of course. | aidenn0 wrote: | My memory is it was somewhere between a nickel and a | dime, but that was maybe 15 years ago. | gs17 wrote: | How would you handle things like change on a 1 dollar item | with 10% sales tax? I use a dollar and a dime to pay for a | coffee refill regularly, and no coins smaller than $0.25 | would be messy without forcing prices to go up/down to | round evenly or elminating all cash. Rounding to the | nearest cent now isn't an issue since sales tax should | always be roughly an integer percentage, but rounding to | quarters is problematic. | aidenn0 wrote: | A) gas prices are in fractions of a cent, and people buy | that with cash | | B) most items aren't an even dollar anyways | | C) I've only once lived anywhere that sales tax was an | integer percent | | More specifically, you round to nearest quarter, just | like we do now for pennies. In your case, the coffee | would be a dollar, and if that was too rough on the | coffee shop, they could raise prices by $0.10 and you'd | pay a dollar and a quarter. | emptybits wrote: | In Canada, with sales taxes varing from 5% to 15% by | province, we round to the nearest nickel on cash | transactions. Non-cash transactions are rounded to the | nearest penny as usual. Works fine IMO. | | Note that the rounding is to the _nearest_ nickel, | neither up nor down. So it favours neither buyer nor | seller; it all nets out about the same for all in the | end. | | We stopped minting pennies 10 years ago. They're still | legal tender but rare to see since there's no need with | 5-cent cash rounding conventions now. There were brief | popular grumblings and misplaced arithmetic anxiety | leading up to the death of the penny. I expect the same | when we bury the nickel and I bet few will miss it either | when its time comes. And then the dime. | | Of course one can construct amusing temporary edge cases | or arbitrage opportunities when buying specific | quantities of specifically priced items in the presence | of any new rounding rules. The market will respond. | ajmurmann wrote: | The US could do what Europe doors and just include the | sales tax in the advertised price and arrive at desired | prices by leveling things out across the offered | inventory. | metadat wrote: | This approach is too imprecise, you'd constantly be | rounding everything up to the nearest dollar -- the net | net equates to yet another ripoff against consumers. | aidenn0 wrote: | We already round up to nearest penny. How do you think I | pay 8.75% tax on something that costs $1.99 anyways? | sneak wrote: | The $10k limit for CTRs and reporting for international travel | is a particularly annoying one, as when it was set it was worth | more than $60k in today-dollars, making our current regulatory | burden something much greater than the law originally intended. | | Currency limits hardcoded in law as integers really need | automatic inflation adjustment similarly specified. | rubyfan wrote: | I kind of wonder if this is intended. | notch656a wrote: | Some of the fines for currency reporting have been adjusted | for inflation. It is absolutely intended. | throwaheyy wrote: | Funnily enough Australia does this. But only for fines! | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_unit | aidenn0 wrote: | I kind of would like the CPI to be used as a peg, but also | think that if lots of things were pegged to it, the | calculation would become a political football. | drdec wrote: | If you choose carefully which things to peg to it, you | might end up with countervailing influences. | nostrademons wrote: | A lot of things already are pegged to it (eg. social | security), and the calculation is already a political | football. That's why there's so much distrust of official | CPI numbers. | | There's no real escape from this other than free trade and | hard assets. Cash regularly becomes less valuable, but food | remains food, housing remains housing, and the future cash | flows of providers of these good continue to float | regardless of cash's value. | batshibstein wrote: | How are these bills now worthless? I can't go to Zimbabwe today | and get 100 trillion dollars (2.6 billion USD) from the currency | that they printed that is supposed to be worth that amount? | fzzt wrote: | Many countries that suffer hyperinflation keep the historical | name of their currency, but establish some exchange rate | between the "old" and "new" money. Zimbabwe went through four | cycles - currency codes ZWD, ZWN, ZWR, and ZWL. | | Per Wikipedia: "The final redenomination produced the "fourth | dollar" (ZWL), which was worth 10^25 ZWD (first dollars)." | | The ZWL itself was subsequently largely abandoned, too. I | believe you'd have more luck transacting in foreign currencies. | ilaksh wrote: | It's been maybe a day since I have had a comment on here buried | so I will go ahead and mention cryptocurrency. | | Hyperinflation is evidence that money needs to be a high | technology. Public ledgers in and of themselves don't prevent | hyperinflation or other problems with money, but they do give us | potentially much more and better tools to make money work. | | Especially if high tech digital money can be holistically | integrated with information about real world resources. | wuliwong wrote: | I bought a couple 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar notes a while | back. Been meaning to frame them, just like this. :) | christophilus wrote: | My brother recently told me that Austrian economics is well known | to be a dead end and that no one takes it seriously anymore. I'm | curious if that's really a generally held view among modern | economists. | | It does seem to me the Austrian theories had decent predictive | power when it comes to the boom / bust cycles and inflation baked | into the current monetary systems. | cpp_frog wrote: | Mark Spitznagel wrote a superb book on austrian investing [0] | (risk management with an austrian perspective, so not exactly | the same). Personally as a mathematician, I prefer this to the | economists who think that because the use lagrangians their | ideas are somehow more valid, or worse yet, sophisticated. | Either case, I don't see why austrian economics get more dirt | than say, MMT. | | EDIT: Spitznagel works with Taleb and his fund, Universa | Investments, had a 4000% return at the beginning of the | covid-19 pandemic. | | [0] The Dao of Capital | eth0up wrote: | Any opinion on Friedrich Hayek, particularly The Road to | Serfdom? I had difficulty absorbing it and lent it to a book | snatcher before finishing. I do remember admiring the bits I | thought I understood. | ogogmad wrote: | Not an expert but my guess is: A purely deductive approach to | economics shouldn't work because economics is not mathematics. | Austrian economics is an attempt to justify economic policies | many would consider overly individualistic using pure | deduction. | | An example of deduction failing unexpectedly can be found here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox | omegaworks wrote: | It's no surprise that many former colonies are on this list. Many | were subjected to economic retribution from attempting to | establish their sovereignty in a hostile global trade | environment. Many colonizers imposed enormous debts on colonies | in exchange for their freedom[1]. Runaway inflation is one of the | many indiscriminate tolls sanctions impose on the people of a | country. | | Why sell the products you produce on your farm to locals when you | can ship them overseas and get dollars to exchange for medicine? | Medicine that is illegal to produce in your country if your | country hopes to operate in the good graces of the WTO[2]. | | All of this history is condensed by the author into mere | "haphazard fiscal policies and civil struggles." This gallery of | currencies is a stunning visceral departure point for | understanding macroeconomic policy, my only wish is that it went | deeper. | | 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti- | hist... | | 2. | https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/pharma_ato186_e... | sofixa wrote: | > Many colonizers imposed enormous debts on colonies in | exchange for their freedom | | Which others apart from Haiti had to pay for their freedom? | keeganjw wrote: | I was looking at the bill from Weimar Germany that says "Zwei | Billionen Mark" with the caption of "Two trillion mark" and I was | like, did they get that wrong? I looked it up and sure enough the | German word for trillion is billion! Languages are wild, I wonder | how that happened. | macintux wrote: | Here's some backstory on the UK vs US treatment of that | question. | | https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/why-ar... | keeganjw wrote: | Oh cool, I didn't know the British used to do that as well! | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | It's English that's weird here. In most languages that have the | word "billion", the long scale is used. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-18 23:00 UTC)