A question about hyperinflation? (please help)
- Thread starter wrcmad
- Start date
mmm....shiney! said:
haha. i don't doubt that those things have value (obviously... we use them), and I acknowledge that farms are a good productive asset, but seriously, wheat/cotton/sugar cannot be used as money/medium for trades. Sure, people can barta - but it has its limitations. Here we all are complaining about hyperinflation and QE, imagine if everyone in the world starts growing wheat - hyperinflation of wheat!
nowaydude said:
This is an old proposal, and these days its also suggested by "hard-money gold-bug men" (Austrian school) some of whom have been interviewed by Eric King. Some of these people are leading thinkers, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Its simply not true that a commodity basket can only be comprised of things from the mineral kingdom.
nowaydude said:
Murray Rothbard in "A History of Money and Banking in the United States" (2002) says, "In the sparsely settled American colonies, money, as it always does, arose in the market as a useful and scarce commodity and began to serve as a general medium of exchange. Thus, beaver fur and wampum were used as money in the north for exchanges with the Indians, and fish and corn also served as money. Rice was used as money in South Carolina, and the most widespread use of commodity money was tobacco, which served as money in Virginia. The pound-of-tobacco was the currency unit in Virginia, with warehouse receipts in tobacco circulating as money backed 100 percent by the tobacco in the warehouse."
If Murray Rothbard, one of the most respected economists in history, is happy to refer to "fish and corn" serving as "money", then I am happy to defer to his authority. I believe that his chose his words very carefully, fully understanding the meaning of the word "money" when he used it. That anyone can grow rice or tobacco, he would have been fully aware.
Black_Sun said:
But he also says that "fish and corn" (sic) were too inconvenient in the end to remain as money.
mmm....shiney! said:
Agreed. The point is that they were money, and most people - unless they knew their monetary history - would probably have denied outright that such a thing could ever have even been possible. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. Hence the idea of a commodity basket replacing the US dollar is again being discussed by some of the smartest guys in the room.
To say that ONLY items 'a', 'b', and 'c', can ever be money, shows a limited imagination; ie: we have tried this once/twice and it did not work, therefore, henceforth for all eternity, it can NEVER work again under any circumstances... A presumptious call.
Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
Hyperinflation in the US will only come when it stops becoming the reserve currency of the world. An early poster nailed it when they said that the US is exporting the inflation. Almost every country in the world is manipulating thier currencies, the ones that are strengthening are just doing it less.
The tipping point comes when just one of the major US currency holders get fed up with the US devaluing thier hard earned assett and cuts their losses, stops taking USD and dumps them into the market. IMO if China did this, it would be enough. If a USD/fire sale happened hyperinflation would be immeadiate.
Hyper inflation hasn't hit yet because of the above and the fact that large portions of these printed dollars have gone into banks during the GFC and stayed there to cover massive losses in many assett classes.
Above is just my opinion of course, but I think it is coming its just a delayed reaction. I still think there will be a large deflationary event before it happens anyway.
The tipping point comes when just one of the major US currency holders get fed up with the US devaluing thier hard earned assett and cuts their losses, stops taking USD and dumps them into the market. IMO if China did this, it would be enough. If a USD/fire sale happened hyperinflation would be immeadiate.
Hyper inflation hasn't hit yet because of the above and the fact that large portions of these printed dollars have gone into banks during the GFC and stayed there to cover massive losses in many assett classes.
Above is just my opinion of course, but I think it is coming its just a delayed reaction. I still think there will be a large deflationary event before it happens anyway.
Black_Sun said:
Like I said earlier, bartering has its limitations. Also, having 'money' backed by a commodity anyone can grow in their backyards will not work. Money needs to be earned through hard work, innovation etc - it cant simply be grown. Plants have exponential potential to replicate - one wheat grain will grow you heaps of grains which will grow you even more. If everyone is busy growing their money rather then working - how will civilisation progress?
edit: we are going OT so I will no longer post on this matter. Obviously my opinion has been stated and you have yours - we can agree to disagree
nowaydude said:
Lol, you ever tried to grow anything?
mmm....shiney! said:
Apparently Wasabia japonica is notoriously difficult to grow... looked into it, as the green dyed horse-raddish that sushi lovers get served is rubbish.
Mmm....shiney! I'm guessing you live in a cold climate? as have I, and indeed, in cold climates it can be a real challenge. But up here in Queensland, its amazing how easily things grow. The people up here are very lucky.
PrettyPrettyShinyShiny
Well-Known Member
Black sun... Tropical climates suit tropical plants. See how easy it is to grow tulips in cairns without a fridge 
Black_Sun said:
Wish it was colder
)))) No mate I live in too. Food crops are difficult to grow, and they require skill and hard work to turn a profit. If wasn't that way, then there would be no natural gas industry.
Trichter
Member
pmbug said:
It will come... G. Soros:
"We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system."
....
He's not. For the first time in his 60-year career, Soros, now 81, admits he is not sure what to do. "It's very hard to know how you can be right, given the damage that was done during the boom years," Soros says. He won't discuss his portfolio, lest anyone think he's talking things down to make a buck. But people who know him well say he advocates making long-term stock picks with solid companies, avoiding gold"the ultimate bubble"and, mainly, holding cash.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/22/george-soros-on-the-coming-u-s-class-war.html
