Quote of the day

From Wilhelm Roepke, "Economics of a Free Society":

'Our generation, which recalls the despair caused by the inflations in the post World War I era and which was required to undergo the self-same catastrophes following World War II, needs no instruction concerning the fact that the worst disease with which a monetary system can be afflicted is that kind of inflation which is caused by a deficit of the government budget. The German inflation of the years 1920-23 will always remain as a horrible example of what happens when a government attempts to cover its budget deficits by resorting to the deceitful and irresponsible expedient of the printing press. What in Germany began as “deficit financing” ended in a series of catastrophic price rises which caused the shameless enrichment of some at the cost of the hopeless impoverishment of others, and in a serious undermining of the whole economic and social structure. But the inflationary creation of money caused by the budget deficits of government need not necessarily lead to the economic and social disorders attendant on an open inflation of the kind that followed World War I. Beginning in 1933, National Socialist Germany demonstrated that a determined government can change an open into a repressed inflation by placing the country in the economic strait jacket of a command economy. Rationing, the imposition of stringent controls on wages, consumption, capital investment, rates of interest, and similar measures aimed at restricting the free use of the increasing amount of purchasing power may succeed in containing for an indefinite period the mounting inflationary pressure on prices, wages, exchange rates, stock prices, etc. Since Hitler has shown how far and how long a government can neutralize an inflation by means of the command economy, we may well ask ourselves whether from now on there will be any government which will not follow the same road when it disposes of a functioning coercive apparatus. The greater the inflationary

pressure the stronger will be the counterpressure of the command economy needed to repress it. By the same token, the command economy must resort to ever more comprehensive and ruthless controls if it is to effectively contain the mounting forces of inflation.'
http://mises.org/books/roepke-freesociety.pdf
(thanks to Jonathan Escott)