In our 11th January 2012 commentary we argued that a certain ‘technical analyst’ was wrong to extrapolate gold’s recent price action into a forecast of imminent deflation. We did so by pointing out that a) the year-over-year (YOY) rate of growth in US True Money Supply (TMS) was about 14% at the time, b) December-2011 was the 36th consecutive month in which the YOY rate of TMS growth was 10% or more, and c) if the YOY rate of TMS growth remained above 10% for two more months then it would be the longest period of double-digit money-supply growth in US history. That is, we pointed out that far from being in ‘danger’ of experiencing a serious bout of deflation, the US was in the midst of a record-breaking period of monetary inflation.
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Mises Institute – Austrian School of Economics – by Frank Shostak on February 9, 2012
The NYU professor of economics Nouriel Roubini said in Davos, Switzerland, on January 25, 2012, that tight policies are making the recession in the euro zone worse. According to Roubini what Europe needs is less austerity and more growth. In particular, the NYU professor is concerned about the deep recession in the eurozone’s peripheral countries: Spain, Portugal, Greece — all are on a strict regime of austerity. For instance, in Spain the yearly rate of growth of government outlays stood at minus 12.4 percent in November against minus 15.7 percent in the month before. In Portugal the yearly rate of growth stood at minus 3.6 percent in December against minus 2.5 percent in November. In Greece the yearly rate of growth fell to 2.9 percent in December from 6.2 percent in the prior month. — READ MORE
I thought perhaps I would indulge in a little gallows humour at the “sudden” discovery of the insolvency of western nations – after all it’s a theme on which my partners and I have been focused for some time and there is only so long one can remain on high alert about the future without trying to have some fun at its expense.
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Hungary, 1945–46
Hungary went through the worst inflation ever recorded between the end of 1945 and July 1946. In 1944, the highest denomination was 1,000 pengő. By the end of 1945, it was 10,000,000 pengő. The highest denomination in mid-1946 was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengő. A special currency the adópengő – or tax pengő – was created for tax and postal payments.[22] The value of the adópengő was adjusted each day, by radio announcement. On 1 January 1946 one adópengő equaled one pengő. By late July, one adópengő equaled 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 2×1021 pengő. When the pengő was replaced in August 1946 by the forint, the total value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation amounted to 1/1,000 of one US dollar.[23] It is the most severe known incident of inflation recorded, peaking at 1.3 × 1016 percent per month (prices double every 15 hours).[24] The overall impact of hyperinflation: On 18 August 1946, 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 4×1029 (four hundred octillion (short scale)) pengő became 1 forint.
Some historians believe that this hyperinflation was purposely started by trained Russian Marxists in order to destroy the Hungarian middle and upper classes.
