[kozak]

So what's was the essence of the trick: did Brazil have some special case of inflation where country was in fact economically healthy, but the people massively underestimated its economical health? Sounds so unreal (maybe that's why the currency was named so :) ).

[crdoconnor]

The essence of the trick was convincing people that the money that they received wasn't going to suddenly become worthless, so they wouldn't go out and spend it immediately, perpetuating the inflation - killing off the vicious cycle.

i.e. it was a hack to reduce the velocity of money in Brazil.

In all likelihood inflation would have come down anyway at some point around that time. Energy prices had stopped rising. Perhaps this made it happen a few months or even a year earlier, though.

If they'd tried this trick in the beginning, while energy prices were still rising it would have done fuck all.

[marcosdumay]

"Real" in Portuguese has two meanings, one is the same as in English, the other is "related to the king".

Brazilian money had this name since we had a king, then, at the inflation time its name was changed, a dozen times or so, and came back to the original.

[rtpg]

said elsewhere, but the essence seems to be that wages were tied to this URV, so people's wages weren't dropping in real value (no pun intended).

[mig39]

Real means "Royal" in Portuguese as well.