Greenback Utopia

A veteran of the Keynesian wars proves that no matter how you pave it with primrose statistics the inflationary road ends in an economic swamp

Today practically every country in the world has suffered or is still suffering from some degree of inflation—mild to catastrophic. Inflation has demoralized the economies of most of our Latin American neighbors. France and West Germany have only in recent years had to take heroic measures to curb the harm of previous inflations. The two “key currency” countries, Great Britain and the United States, face a balance-of-payments crisis as a result of their past inflations and of the excessively free use of their currencies as the reserves of other countries. Yet it is one of the strange ironies of our era that with this record before them an increasing number of economic writers are boldly announcing that more and more deliberate inflation is the supreme remedy for all our economic ills.

HH

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Henry Hazlitt

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A veteran of the Keynesian wars proves that no matter how you pave it with primrose statistics the inflationary road ends in an economic swamp

Today practically every country in the world has suffered or is still suffering from some degree of inflation—mild to catastrophic. Inflation has demoralized the economies of most of our Latin American neighbors. France and West Germany have only in recent years had to take heroic measures to curb the harm of previous inflations. The two “key currency” countries, Great Britain and the United States, face a balance-of-payments crisis as a result of their past inflations and of the excessively free use of their currencies as the reserves of other countries. Yet it is one of the strange ironies of our era that with this record before them an increasing number of economic writers are boldly announcing that more and more deliberate inflation is the supreme remedy for all our economic ills.