Monday, December 1, 2008

Duckburg Inflation

For the last couple of months I've been wandering around like the Ancient Mariner, telling this same tale to any Wedding Guest who would listen.
Nobody gets it.
This should help.
If anyone sees any difference in this Uncle Scrooge cartoon (featuring Huey, Dewey, and Louie) and our current Federal Reserve activity, please let me know.



HT to ReasonTV and Samizdata.

4 comments:

Dr Ralph said...

Amusing as always. I never realized the Disney people were closet Monetarists.

One question: why does gold (and/or silver) always seem to be the cure for the ills of paper currency? What intrinsic value do these somewhat scarce metals have? You can't eat them, they aren't much good for making weapons. They have limited industrial uses and they look nice when all polished up, but that's about it.

Why not something with real (rather than symbolic) value? If scarcity alone is the determining factor, surely there are better candidates.

Anonymous said...

Here's the difference ... in Duckburg, the printing of money led to rampant inflation and complete devaluation of the coin pieces. Today, we face mild deflation. Printing money in response to deflationary pressures is actually rather prudent.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Dr.,
As I understand it, Gold and Silver are scarce things that are useful.
Part of the advantage of gold/silver is that unlike other scarce, like Nolan Ryan rookie cards, Van Gogh paintings, diamonds, etc., they can be melted, broken apart, split, etc, and retain a proportional percentage of their value.

Anti-deflation Anon,
Unfortunately, they've been printing tons of the stuff for the last 30 years, regardless of whether they're trying to fight inflation, deflation, or mild infestations of crabgrass in The Fed's front yard.
Too much currency chasing too few products. A dollar saved is .50 lost.

AdamSmithAcademy.org said...

There is a version of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" that includes the etext, audio narration and even illustrations - which might make it helpful for those that are interested in the story but would like to also listen to it and watch (in a sense):
http://www.adamsmithacademy.org/etext/TheRimeoftheAncientMariner.html