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user-inactivated  ·  3988 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Bits and Barbarism

    Something often missed in discussions of hyperinflation is that it's a brutally effective way to eliminate foreign debt.

Can you expand on this? It seems to me that the creation of money is an excellent way to eliminate debt, yes, but that hyperinflation and less debt are two results of one cause (money creation ex nihilo), rather than one cause and one result.

EDIT: so ideally Venezuela walks that fine line where it creates money to throw at its debt to the United States, assuming that exists, while still maintaining a manageable inflation rate. Unfortunately instead Venezuela is fucked for tangentially-related reasons.

EDIT2: as far as the Nixon Shock, I thought the Frum column mentioned in the Wikipedia article had some good bits.