| |
11/20/08
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
October
16, 2006 Certain historical cases of inflation have become sufficiently notorious to become textbook examples of government printing presses run riot. In the twentieth century the classic episode was the German hyperinflation of 1923. The eighteenth century affords us the cases of the American and French Revolutions, and the monetary debasement for which those countries' governments were responsible. In the American case, the continental currency lost so much of its value that it became common to describe something as worthless by saying it was "not worth a Continental." Financing for the American War for Independence included loans and subsidies from the French government as well as the modest sums Congress received as a result of its requisitions upon the states. But paper money played a central role in Revolutionary War finance. When Congress first began printing bills of credit (irredeemable paper money that would be received as payment for taxes) in 1775, the idea was that the states would levy taxes and collect the bills in payment of the taxes, thereby retiring them. Not only did the states not levy those taxes, but they also began printing paper money of their own. The result was that more and more paper continued to be printed, leading in turn to a level of depreciation that has become legendary. (Read the rest here. Click the "back button" to return to The Price of Liberty.)
Other articles at the von Mises Institute (There are thousands of them, all free.) Defense
Services on the Free Market Making
Economic Sense The
Trouble with NASA
Ludwig
von Mises Institute The
Free Market, published by the Mises Institute The
Independent Institute Foundation
for Economic Education (FEE) Ayn
Rand Institute Institute
for Humane Studies National
Center for Policy Analysis Reason
Foundation Acton
Institute Future
of Freedom Foundation |
Archives The
Ethics of Liberty The
Idea of a Private Law Society The
Source of Prices Enterprising
Education: Doing Away with the Public School System Why
is Medical Care so Expensive? The
Snare of Government Subsidies How
We Come to Own Ourselves Is
All-Day Kindergarten An Economic Fix? The
Justice and Prudence of War: Toward A Libertarian Analysis The
Antifederalists Were Right Do
Greedy Spinach Merchants Want To Kill You? Click
the "back button" to return to The Price of Liberty.)
| ||||||||||||||
|
Submit
Feedback
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
