Topic: Why don't we see US$ hyperinflation? (Read 14687 times)

Dinner with friends in a restaurant : 1$ bill :
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/eighty-old-man-dined-dashed-10-finally-pays-164626895.html?vp=1

   It's an interesting perspective. Likening the breaking with the gold standard to a default is interesting.

 However, what the author fails to recognize is that Wedgie has been protecting all of the kids from becoming vassal states of Russia for decades, and if you think that being bullied by the US is worse than being bullied by Russia, just ask the millions who are still flocking from Eastern to Western Europe.

   I am not coming out on the side of capitalism or communism- it's definitely between a rock and a hard place- but many Europeans and a lot of Americans sadly don't seem to get that the economic prosperity and social systems of countries like Sweden are very much dependent on the fact that they have not had to maintain a military of a size sufficient to protect themselves for decades. This enables their governments to focus on education and social services. The value of the trade deficit reflects the value of the service that the US provides as the global police force.

   Just like national government or the mafia, you get the protection and pay the protection money whether you want to or not. The wars are like turf battles.

At least Wedgie gave them papers instead of pushing drugs, like some other guys in the history.

Here is an incredible read. It doesn't exactly explain the OP's question of "Why don't we see US$ hyperinflation?" but it does an incredible job of explaining in very, very simple terms why the US has been able to get away with everything it has done to prevent it. It was written by Rickard Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. This guy is not American so it is very interesting to get his take on American policies from an outsider's point of view.

http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/17/the-imminent-dollar-collaps-explained-to-an-8-year-old/

The Imminent Dollar Collapse, Explained To An Eight Year Old

It’s the elephant in the room. The United States is utterly bankrupt and has been living off of borrowed money since 1971, when it defaulted on its loans — though of course, it wasn’t worded like that. Not even an income tax of 100% is enough to cover the expenses, and the US is about to go the way of the Soviet Union.

A while back before the dollar’s dead cat bounce, I wrote a story in Swedish explaining the issue to an eight-year-old. I think it’s time to repeat it in English.

So imagine we we’re a bunch of eight-year-olds. There’s Anna, Wei, Jesús, Felipe, Maria, Sven, Jean-Pierre and Sergei.

Oh, and there’s Wedgie.

His real name is Eddie, but everybody calls him Wedgie because he’s such a mean bully. Nobody really wants to play with him, but if we don’t, he’s mean to us. So we do anyway.

We collect nice shiny things. We build other things out of them sometimes. And then we sell the things we find and make to one another. And playing with Wedgie was okay after all, because he was buying a lot from all of us. Candy, jewelry from smooth stones, shiny seashells. Everybody was happy. Or at least nobody wanted to protest, because as fun as it was that Wedgie was buying, he could get very threatening when people would doubt him.

The thing was, Wedgie had been buying more than he had been selling for quite some time now. He was always in the red, living “above his means”, like they say. Wedgie had stopped paying in money altogether, because he never had any. He would pay with little pieces of paper instead, where it said how much he owed us, and he promised to pay for real later. He was writing those small pieces of paper in his room at night, and paid the rest of us with them, promising to replace them with real money later. He never said when that “later” would actually be.

Nobody else could pull this off. Only Wedgie. Because if somebody were to stand up to him… Wedgie was rather large and could look mean. Could be very mean, too. And besides, everybody wanted their money back the day Wedgie would have real money to pay us back, so everybody kept accepting the small pieces of paper that Wedgie was making in his room. “Five Wedgiemoneys”, they would say.

We even started trading directly in Wedgiemoney. Everybody had collected so much, it was just simpler that way. Some of us had almost as much Wedgiemoney as we had real money, or more.

Wedgie also made sure, in his threatening way, that some things could only be bought with Wedgiemoney. This forced us to change our real money for Wedgiemoney first, between each other, before we could buy what we wanted. Or we could Wedgiemoney directly from Wedgie, of course. In exchange for real money.

But it was fun too, in a way. Everybody had more money. Well, the price of everything went up too, of course, because we couldn’t find or make more things, we only had more money. But several of us had gotten much richer thanks to all the Wedgiemoney we had. We were very glad over that.

Then… something happened. We started thinking about the fact that Wedgie almost never sold anything. First, we were just looking at each other, as if we knew what we were thinking. Gradually, when Wedgie was not around, we started to look worried among each other.

Then somebody, I don’t recall who it was, said out loud what everybody was thinking:

What happens if Wedgie never pays back?

Suddenly, like a strong flashlight being turned on in the night, everybody realized that the Wedgiemoney could be completely worthless. Everybody was just pretending that they were worth as much as real money. If Wedgie didn’t pay back, everybody was sitting with a pile of stupid paper that wasn’t worth anything. But since nobody wanted to say out loud that “my money isn’t worth anything”, and suddenly be very poor compared to everybody else, we kept on pretending that Wedgiemoney was worth as much as real money.

Felipe was the one to carefully try to get rid of all his Wedgiemoney. He offered all of us to buy his Wedgiemoney for less than they were worth. Or less than the worth Wedgie claimed, anyway. Felipe wanted four real moneys for every paper that said “Five Wedgiemoneys”, the Wedgie-fivers.

Then, Anna asked for three real moneys for every Wedgie-fiver. Anna and Felipe soon only had real money, for the rest of us had bought their Wedgiemoneys. For Wedgie would pay back soon, wouldn’t he? It would have been a good deal.

But it wasn’t. All of a sudden, everybody was trading the Wedgie-fivers for two and fifty. Nobody really wanted Wedgiemoney any more. We agreed that they were only worth half of what they said. Nobody said it out loud, we all knew it anyway.

This didn’t worry Wedgie at all. He just started writing Wedgie-tenners instead, so he would continue buying things that cost five real moneys. When somebody asked when he was going to pay back, he just looked mean like Wedgie could do, and that everybody knew that Wedgie could do.

Then, that day came.

The day when we realized that Wedgie never had had any intention of paying back in the first place, and we realized he had been playing us for fools. We had paper, and he had all the nice things. He had been writing pieces of paper for us that we had accepted as real money, and didn’t want to lose.

But it was too late. We had realized he was never going to pay a single money back, even though the Wedgiemoney said he would.

So we put all our Wedgiemoney in a large pile, that we knew were garbage. And we didn’t accept any more from him. They weren’t good for anything, he was never going to pay back. He became really angry, and really mean, but it didn’t help him this time. We knew that we had been played for fools, and were going to keep our nice things to ourselves instead.

But only then came the real shock.

None of us had any money to buy things from each other any more. We had gotten so used to things costing both twenty and thirty moneys, even though they had only cost one or two before Wedgie had started writing his stupid pieces of paper. We thought we all had a lot of money, but we didn’t. We had gotten used to paying for a thirty-money item with five real moneys and 25 Wedgiemoneys.

Suddenly, nobody could afford the thirty-money items at all. Nobody had any money. Nobody could buy things as the prices remained where they were, and nobody could lower their prices, as everybody needed the money for what they wanted to sell.

We realized, even though we didn’t really want to, that it wasn’t only Wedgie’s fault that we had become poor. It was just as much our own. We had been dumb enough to believe him, even though we knew he was lying. It was always too expensive for us to say out loud that he had been lying the whole time, and therefore, we were in a much worse situation now.

We entered a very poor and rough time where nobody could afford anything. Everything was very, very expensive, all because of Wedgie’s stupid pretend money. They had made everything expensive, when nobody really had any money in reality. We had to get used to buying things for maybe one money instead of the things that we had bought before for ten. We weren’t used to living like that, day by day, and it was really rough. But nobody had any money and everything was still expensive.

Let’s end the story here and jump to today:

The United States has had a negative trade balance since 1976. The United States has lived above its means every year, year by year, after 1975 — and at a rapidly accelerating rate. Five years prior, the United States had unilaterally terminated the Bretton-Woods agreement that tied the dollar to gold, following a rapid decline in gold coverage during the Vietnam War. Charles de Gaulle of France demanded that the United States made good on its loan contract, and demanded gold for France’s dollars. The unsolvable situation caused President Richard Nixon to default on the US debts and say they weren’t going to pay any back. This event has been called The Nixon Shock and happened on August 15, 1971.

Of course, it wasn’t called a bankruptcy; it was spun as a reform of the international monetary system. Had anyone else done it, it would probably have been called a bankruptcy. In any case, after that point, all the United States had to do was to fire up the dollar printing presses. And boy, did they.

The last few years, the United States has had a trade deficit of over 500 billion US dollars, peaking at over 800 billion. That is eight times more than the country in second place and is growing rapidly. The United States is simply buying vastly more than it is selling, and has done so for thirty-five years. It compensates for this by selling IOUs, and at the same time pointing at its huge military powers for an implied threat in the case of non-acceptance of the IOUs — a military force which is unsustainably funded by these same IOUs.

Today, there are over three trillion dollars in currency reserves outside the United States. More specifically, there are 3,144,256,000,000 US dollars. That’s one portion of those IOUs. They have roughly halved in value in the past ten years.

In 2008, people were talking about a “financial crisis”. As if the bottom was reached, as if it was a temporary glitch, as if things were under control.

We have only reached the point in the story where people look at each other and ask “what if Wedgie doesn’t pay back?”.

There’s only a seed of doubt necessary to let loose the snowball in the avalanche slope. In 2008, the seed came from financial institutions that went belly-up. Unwisely, the US absorbed their huge losses into the government and so created an even worse situation for today, even though it created a dead cat bounce.

Some of the most prestigious financial analysts — Standard & Poor and Moody’s — have warned the US that they may downgrade the United States’ credit rating. The European ratings firm Feri Euroratings went ahead and actually downgraded the United States on June 8, right after Republican Paul Ryan said right out that the United States should default. That is quite extraordinary.

Many brokers have as a stability rule that they may only trade in triple-A bonds, the highest creditworthiness. With the US Treasury Bonds now downgraded, these brokers need to sell these bonds, accelerating the process. This was unthinkable — the US Treasury bonds have been the norm for credit grading, axiomatically being the triple-A rating.

The world has been buying IOUs without coverage to maintain the value of the previous IOUs, with no other creditworthiness than an assumption that the US will pay back some day. That day is not going to come, and we’re all going to be poor for a while.

The situation will stabilize, but not without Wedgie ceasing to buy things for pretend money. On the other side of that fence is another world economy, that I know very little of.

Very interesting thread, I would add that we will see probably see hyperinflation in the US but it is hard to predict if it will start in a year, in 3 years or more; you probably cannot increase the money supply by 2digits every year without going into hyperinflation at some point when you have a low one digit growth ect.

Austrian, not Australian ...

There are plenty of alternatives, albeit not right now.
The most realistic one being a gold-backed CNY (Renminbi) as this is the only country actively preparing and pushing for exactly that, even in a very open manner.
All other nations aware of the impending and unavoidable paradigm change only repatriate their gold holdings from abroad to prepare.
To some extend they stopped buying US treasuries (which they know can and will never be repaid, this is already mathematically impossible) or even became limited net sellers of these, while increasing their gold holdings.

BTC is entirely out of the question, in the big scope of things I personally view it as a temporary, technological and social experiment.

The only thing keeping the US Petrodollar still alive is the US military force & NATO proxies and the Federal Government's clear message that it will use it indiscriminately against anyone who opposes the US Dollar's role of global domination.
Since operating this insane amount of military might is budgetary suicide and unsustainable over the next decades, the empire running it will eventually fall like many others before it.
My personal opinion is that China is preparing and patiently waiting for exactly this moment.
I also come to think that - given the intensity of US preparations domestic & abroad - the US itself projects its downfall to occur maybe already this decade.

The only question about the end of the US Dollar dominance is in what way it will vanish - with a blimp or with a bang.
I count on the latter, unless the powers that originally crafted it have already prepared to abandon ship at the right time, while sabotaging the old dying empire at a critical junction.
Some argue they - behind the curtain - are exactly doing that already and are just looking to jump ship when the time is right, in the meantime running the USA into the ground economicaly.
These rats behind the curtain that fear the daylight will never stand & fight, they always lead proxy wars and will disappear the second they face direct and life-threatening opposition.
But before they can do that, they need a petsy to blame. Usually, then while their muppets are fighting their wars, they'll silently switch sides.

In theory, however, it's also possible that the US will attempt to maintain and enforce its dominance over at least the western hemisphere, while the eastern hemisphere may look towards China. For as long as they are able to maintain military control over the most important global resources to feed its empire, this could play out to be a realistic scenario for quite some time.

AirForce Vision : Global Vigilance, Global Reach, Global Power For America
( http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/digital/pdf/articles/2014-Mar-Apr/SLP-Welsh.pdf )

Greek rural societies used to work this way, using a reputation/status system, where they gained status within the community by caring for the community, it's like storing your wealth in the network, instead in your wallet.
Funny thing one could say bitcoin works like that if
1. you buy bitcoins with every fiat you have (increasing bitcoin's capitalization - network's value)
2. only convert to fiat when you absolutely need to

but i think speculation spoils it, you can't speculate with reputation.

I wonder if a coin could mimic a gift economy network

The money in circulation (coins/paper) for usd+eur are in the 2.5trn usd range. If you go the M3 route, it's somewhere near 25 trillion usd.

Above ground gold at 180ktons and a price of 40mn per ton is like 7.2trn usd in worth. With a revaluation of gold at 10x (as demand will skyrocket for monetizing it) we are talking about 72 trn usd for above ground quantities, half of which is investment grade gold (bars, bullion coins etc). So there's plenty of gold. And there's also plenty of silver and platinum that can also be monetized - as has been done historically.

The thing is that there is no alternative to the US dollar so the situation will remain until there is. Think about it, gold is not practical and there is not enough of it. Btc is not used widely enough and can be difficult to trade for other currencies, the euro is too risky especially with crimea etc and the rmb is pegged to US dollar and has too much political risk associated with it. So the question is which government is least likely to default either explicitly or by stealth. The answer is the US, we may not like it but that is the situation. If you don't believe it ask yourself if you had to move all your wealth into one fiat currency (outside your home currency if you are not a US citizen) which would it be. If your answer is something other than $US then I would like to know which one and why?

True in a way, hence the many colonies and the hunt for treasure abroad.

I was basically referring to this image :


The way I understand it, the empire with the largest fleets (military and trade ships) was able to maintain control over most of the "sweet spots" (colonies) and thus defined as a dominating world power with the ability to dictate certain terms onto other nations.
As this was definitely far more difficult in the past on a gold (or silver) standard, the present US Dollar dominance IMHO is already much overstretched. In the old days, that couldn't have lasted so long.

Historically, gold was the world's reserve currency. Gold coins from the "top" nations were more widely circulated and accepted because of their reputation, but other than that, it was worth precisely the same as any other gold coin of the same weight and composition.

For example in the 19th century, whether one was trading in gold sovereigns (uk), gold francs (france), gold rubles (russia) or gold dollars (usa), it was all the same. No country in particular enjoyed any advantage due to minting a globally recognized coin. The ratio between these coins was pretty much fixed due to the content/composition they had. If a country wanted to devalue they had to lower the metal content or weight of their national coin.

The monopoly-type-money scam and the huge benefit of its issuer in global affairs is a rather new phenomenon.

Well written, this is what is happening.

IMHO :

The US Dollar has had (and still has) the enormous advantage of being the world reserve currency.

That unique attribute permits the FED to export and distribute its inflation to other nations.
Or described in other words forces other nations to devalue their domestic currencies in pair with the US Dollar in order to remain competivite in world trade according to their respective import/export requirements and desired trade balances.

Since inflation is already running relatively hot since many years, this allows for a unique cushioning effect, as the inflationary developments can be distributed worldwide PLUS they seep through very long channels before becoming effective. Where needed, all western-oriented central banks worldwide act in perfect harmony to ensure the distribution is averaged amongst their respective nations.

In comparison, any other nation inflating its domestic currency at the rates i.e. the FED does it , would eventually suffer the same consequences - BUT they'd arrive far quicker and in a far more linear fashion. This effect can (and occasionally is) only be countered by individual "friendly" central banks increasing their reserves of that currency in their foreign currency reserves basket in order to stabilize that affected currency in question.

Other than that, in today's bizarro FX markets, having the right "talking heads" issuing the right prepared statements as a promise for future action often is enough - even if they're empty promises and based on nothing but fairytales and unicorns.
(i.e. ECB's Mario "Goldman Sachs" Draghi stating to "do whatever it takes to save the Euro" or Ben "Shalom" Bernanke stating "no bubble there" or "sees no significant risk of inflation")

In short :
It's already developing but it's highly assymmetric and delayed by many factors - however, it is still unavoidable if the present course is kept.
However, the entire above mechanisms will be bypassed and inflation kicked into high gear as soon as the US Petrodollar monopoly is abandoned by sufficient countries.
And this is exactly what we're seeing since about 2 years now.
(previous attempts of bypassing the US Dollar in international trades so far resulted in governments being toppled and/or nations being destroyed/invaded by US forces to install a Dollar-friendly muppet regime - but now it's China and Russia that openly challenge the Petrodollar, which is a whole new playing field).

Historically, nations enjoying the status of issuing the world's reserve currency became great and wealthy empires - however this luxury never lasts forever and all of these empires imploded more or less after losing this status. When the day of reckoning comes, I assume the US is fully prepared for it (just look at its military, foreign/domestic policies and intense foreign/domestic preparations. This is what a country looks like that is preparing domestically for a complete loss of prevailing social order and ready to commit to a very large war abroad)

   Hoarding food leads to a vicious cycle- people think there is going to be a food shortage, which causes people to buy a bunch of food- demand for food increases, which raises prices, which causes more people to think there is going to be a food shortage...

   If things get really bad, gold will not save you, food will not save you, bitcoin will not save you. I fpeople see you have something to eat while everyone is starving they are going to notice... The only thing in that situation that could help is social networks- having a support network of real life people in a region that all band together and suport eachother. For most of human history these were tribes, and tribal identity was cemented by rituals, language, and geographic origin- in other words, shared experience.

   Now nations have come to replace tribes. What we need is a truly global identity that transcends national boundaries, to create a global force more powerful than any nation. This has to be based on compassion and generosity, or what some call the gift economy. When you give gifts social capital builds up.

   Holidays are a big part of national identity- this is why holidays that are specific to a certain area cannot be part of a global identity- easter is originally a spring equinox celebration, and christmas a winter solstice celebration.

  Nationalism is making artificial divisions between people based on ethnicity and language. Divide and conquer- the global elite profit.

  What is the only force really presenting a credible threat to the dominion of the elite?

  What is the largest single group that declines to participate in the global financial system?

  How long would the governments of Afghanistan (12.9 billion/y), Israel(3 billion/y), Egypt(1.4 billion/y), Jordan(850 mil/y), Somalia(278 million/y), Indonesia(252 mil/y), Sudan(921 mil/y) and Pakistan(1.7 billion/y) last if they stopped receiving US tax dollars?

You are correct, but...
I try to forget about all that.
Bitcoin can change some things for the better.

I have pleded with so many people to buy food... I have a bad feeling I will end up fleeing or risk getting raided for food :S.  No one is ready for any sort of problem with the system..

The other scary thing is FEMA's ability to take over litterally everything and make N.A. a dictatorship in less than a week.. :S.  In the 60's they ran adds against the Russians about how they would determine your pay, your mate, where you live.. In 2010.. FEMA was signed the ablity to do all of this...  ... Such failure.. such failure.

Actually the US govt has figured it can stay in business stimulating the economy with QE and other measures. The problem, let me put it in a small story.

Say you have a corporation call it the USA Corp and they issue 1 trillion shares of stock and in fact make all shares bearer shares. Then distribute these shares to people who actually do work or trade items for these shares.

Let us say 1 share = $1 get the picture your dollar bill is really a receipt for a "dollar" that does not have any basis in reality. (it used to be based on gold and or silver at a fixed unit to $ value ie $35 $ to one ounce of gold.

With QE and such the govt simply prints more shares in the company and they spend them into existence buying things like stocks and overpriced toilet seats for NASA. let us say the QE is 10 billion a month at the end of the year they have stimulated the economy with 100 billion or 1/10th of all shares in existence.

The govt did not produce a product or manufacture anything they simply printed more shares of the corporation and sold them and they got the profit. While at the same time there is now 1.1 trillion $$$ in existence.

So say you had 1 dollar bill or share in the corporation  and your share represented 1/trillionth well now your 1 dollar in your pocket was just devaluated to 1 of 1.1 trillion you just lost 10% of your value they robbed you and yours for 10% of your savings.

So each month the govt prints more shares and injects them into the market, ie keeping stock prices high for the rich f***s .

In reality if you were a private company and you wanted to issue more shares you would have to do a stock split and compensate all other stock holders a equal percentage of all stock issued. ie in the scenario above they would have to issue you 10 cents in addl stock for free bringing your shares to 1.1 up form one. otherwise it would be THEFT.

Why do we let the country get away with this fraudulent practice?

The Dollar was indexed to something of value until 1965 when they took the silver out of the coins. Right now silver dime from 1964 in crappy condition just the silver value is $1.45 http://www.coinflation.com/ look near botton of page for older coins, this is the actual melt value of the metal in coins. So I ask you did the silver in a dime gain weight or has the government debased the currency over 14x using this as an example.

This is THEFT without a gun. The pen can steal much more than the sword in the long run and this is the game our politicians play, give the image we are a great country but make it on th ebacks of the little people by stealing anything they save through devaluation and printing money. you cannot print somehting of value and get away with it...

Next you get the finances of Zimbabwe of the 1990's an germany post WWI id a wheel barrel full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

And for others Hyperinflation is not 10-20% a year. it is 10-20% a day, people ask bosses for pay daily as by the end of e the week thier paycheck cannot keep up with the cost of food!

Stock up on beans and rice now... its coming this summer or next winter...

George

With my limited knowledge, I believe, its because USD is hegemony currency of world. Government sucks money out of you by printing. Similarly, US government sucks money out of other countries by by printing, which compensates inflation that was suppose to occur on homeland.

Alex Jones was wrong.