Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by phreeza 1776 days ago
> It's almost always the financial/monetary side that's the problem.

How do you explain hyperinflation, where there is too much money chasing too few resources?

2 comments

I didn't mean that money shortage is always the problem, that that has been often the notable case in recent experience. Hyperinflation is also a monetary/financial issue, too much money, not enough demand, crashing value.

I think the difference between inflation & hyperinflation is that "inflation" can be contained mostly within the real economy. Hyperinflation, has to have a macroeconomic, money supply related, explanation.

Lebanon's current mess, for eg, is more or less the consequence of letting Beirut banks do what stablecoin does, but the old fashioned way. High interest dollar accounts, backed by high interest Lira. Lira loans, backed by the same dollarized banking system. Dollars come in, and dollars are owed. Liras go out, and Liras are owed back. It works until the underlying currency bends. Liras come in. Dollars go out. A port explosion & widespread loss of confidence in the governing system are part of the story.

The upshot I'm driving for is that stuff happening entirely in the money markets causes determines goods flowing in and out of ports and fibre, not the other way around. It's not lebanon's ability to export goods that changed and killed its ability to import goods and resources. It's its inability to import dollars, and its ability to pay using Liras that collapsed first.

Hyperinflation is too much currency chasing too few resources, but currency is not the same thing as money. There are a whole bunch of nonlinearities because the value ascribed to a unit of currency does not instantly update when new money enters circulation and people speculate about long term behavior, but over the long term if you 100X the currency supply, a dollar is simply 1/100th the amount of money it used to be.