The Coronavirus Must Not Be Allowed to Make the Dollar into the New Toilet Paper

Do not be surprised if, a year from now, prices are 20 percent or more higher than they are today and that tens of millions of elderly people on fixed incomes suffer greatly as a result.
The recently enacted “stimulus” legislation costing $6.2 trillion can be paid for only by the printing of new and additional money in that amount, which will represent an increase in the M1 money supply to substantially more than double its present height.
This amount of increase in the money supply is sufficient by itself to double or more than double prices and totally destroy the finances of the elderly, if not by next year, then over the next few years.
With today’s mentality of bottomless economic ignorance and reckless irresponsibility, the plight of the elderly will likely be met by still more “stimulus.”
We are in process of destroying the dollar.
The long-run solution is to deprive the government of the power to create money, which can be accomplished by restoring the gold standard and requiring that the issuance of new and additional paper money be limited by the increase in the supply of gold.
The immediate solution is to go back to work and end the seeming need for trillions of additional paper dollars, the consequences of which will be worse than any the Coronavirus could produce.
The lockdowns are in violation of The First Amendment’s prohibition of laws violating the freedoms of religion and of assembly. They are also in violation of the Ninth Amendment’s implicit recognition of the right to work.
Organizing should be started on a million-man march on Washington to demand the end of lockdowns and the government’s ability to create limitless quantities of paper money.
Let all who are at risk from the Coronavirus take precautions. But do not consider as a precaution the destruction of money and the economic system.
We must not allow trillions to become the new billions, and then the new millions, and the paper dollar to become the new toilet paper.

A video version of this post can be found on YouTube under the title "No Toilet Paper Dollar." It's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Z8VTiE8iw&feature=youtu.be

Major Inflation and Great Depression at the Same Time?

Re: https://mises.org/wire/why-world-has-dollar-shortage-despite-massive-fed-action
Mises.org: Why the World Has a Dollar Shortage


Dear Bob,

I’ve  just read not only the article but also all the comments that followed it, and I thank you for calling it to my attention. I had not been aware of the extent of the dollar’s use in debt issuance abroad.

If possible, I’d like to get some more information. For example, the volume of dollar denominated debt issued outside the US relative to dollar denominated debt issued inside the US. The volume of externally issued dollar denominated debt relative to Euro, Yen, and Yuan denominated debt. The volume  of dollar denominated debt owed by foreign banks to US banks and of such debt in general owed by foreign firms and individuals to US banks and other US lenders, including corporations selling on short-term credit.

The world’s alleged dollar “shortage” is of the same character as a heroin addict’s heroin shortage. There’s an artificial need that’s created by consuming the supply, getting hooked on it, and then needing an ever growing supply. In this case, cutting back on the supply, not increasing it, would eliminate the “shortage.”

Interestingly, in the German hyperinflation of 1923, there were frequent complaints of currency shortages and the German central bank claimed that it was increasing the supply of marks in response to an increase in the demand for them. What was actually going on was that people were trying to buy goods as fast as possible, before their prices rose still further and needed more cash with which to do so.

The article is making me wonder if we could simultaneously have a world-wide depression as the result of dollars being insufficient to avoid large-scale bankruptcies abroad and their snow-balling effect, and, if not an immediate hyper-inflation, at least a very major surge in consumer prices in the US, because of the massive new and additional money creation now underway with the “bailout” programs.

I’m taking the liberty of publishing my reply to you on my blog and also adding it as a further comment on Mises.org and Dis Cus.



Best regards,

George