Gold and What Moves it.

by Jim Sinclair:

 

Hyperinflation in the US dollar is considered impossible by some.

 

Some of this opinion is motivated by the concepts and implications of the reserve currency facing such a challenge. Others deny that historical experiences of hyperinflation has causes, which dismisses the present problems of the US dollar as possible contribution to a hyper-inflationary experience.

 

The first opinion seems a product of misplaced patriotism rather than hard analysis. This because hyperinflation in a reserve currency, even if reserve by default, has implications to the fiat monetary system that most analysts consider too extreme to even consider. That is the US smack of flag waving over logic.

 

The second opinion would eliminate the Weimar experience because many see that as a direct product of war reparations Germany had agreed to. The common belief is that it was the war reparations that caused the hyperinflation, which is totally wrong, as presented. It was not the reparations, but the desire and decision to attempt to water the currency down to reduce the reparation costs that lead to the hyperinflation which followed.

 

The Weimar experience could have been different if the financial decision makers had been willing to suffer the pain of repayment over time and the attendant weight it would have placed on the economy. The decision to avoid the immediate pain of the cost of reparation via debasement of the currency is why the Weimar experience went into runaway hyperinflation.

 

In my opinion the decision in the Weimar experience was to debase the currency in order to offset reparations which then caused hyperinflation, not the reparations themselves. I believe it is exactly the same in modern times as the US financial decision makers adopted QE when Lehman Brothers failed in order to not face the consequences of that failure which was then the fraudulent mountain of OTC derivatives. ...