Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jfengel 1360 days ago
Hyperinflation happens only when you've already got economic decay -- in fact, economic collapse. Hyperinflation is the symptom, not the cause.

Hyperinflation isn't numbers like 10% annual inflation, which are extreme events in functioning economies. Some definitions put it at more like 10,000%. That's not caused by central bank manipulation. That's caused by a complete collapse of the economy. The central bank can try to deal with that by printing almost-valueless currency as an IOU, but that's the result, not the cause.

That's often caused by war, though it's sometimes caused by massive mismanagement of resources. It's not really relevant to the kinds of situations being discussed in the article, which are functioning economies (as long as they can keep from going to war on each other).