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Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

Nobody benefits in the long run. Nobody. Everyone loses when money printing happens.

What you pointed out - i.e. 'those holding property' - they don't 'benefit' - so much as their assets are in something that can't depreciate so quickly as currency.

If government prints massive bolivars - well - their houses go up by that amount proportionally. So they are somewhat 'insulated' from the inflation problems.

Now - because 'money printing' is a 100% signal of economic collapse, no 'asset' is going to save you at the end of the day, because as everything falls apart ... nobody has any money for anything, or rather, they have wads of worthless paper that nobody else wants ...

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I currently live in Venezuela and I'm lucky enough to work both with my own local business and with income in foreign currency. People like me are having a field day here, mostly because inflation does not affect you directly when you just keep rising the price of your goods/services. And as for the foreign currency you earn, it means that very quickly I was able to purchase a car and a house and pay off debt in a way that not even in my wildest dreams I would have done it.

The govt is definitely destroying the economy, but just like in war economies, some people would benefit while a lot more will suffer. In here, the people suffering are people that depend on a wage.

I have stopped complaining about it because there is no real political leadership anywhere willing to do what is necessary to fix it, so the party will keep going on until they cannot pay their international obligations and the whole thing will start falling under its own weight.

How long do you think it will take before "the whole thing" collapses? And what will come after the collapse?

The problem is that there won't be any collapse per se. Maybe a default on government paying its international debt or something.

What is slowly happening here is that this is morphing into another Cuba, where you will see the vast majority of the population earning these miserable wages, but they survive because of government subsidized food and services.

The worst part is that here the supply of such food is highly irregular so you see massive lines when people find out corn flour or whatever other product arrives at a store. But of course, if you have the means, you just buy whatever you want at market prices in certain stores and just avoid the whole thing. Prices that people living with a wage cannot afford.

So the real tragedy is this boiling frog effect. In 1989, there were massive riots because fuel prices increased, but now people are losing the will to fight for their rights, helped by lack of clear planning and leadership on the opposition. So I would say most people are just thinking of migrating somewhere else, Argentina and Chile especially, and frankly, I cannot blame them.

Hard assets are always worth money. Real estate, durable machinery, etc. The inflation lets you erase the mortgages on them.

Many of the early backers of the Nazi regime were people who were able to get control of valuable industrial property and manufacturing equipment during the Weimar hyperinflation. Iirc, it's detailed in Albert Speer's book.

"Hard assets are always worth money. Real estate, durable machinery, etc. The inflation lets you erase the mortgages on them."

Inflation reduces the value of things priced in the currency, so the 'mortgage' is a financial product and so is worthless.

But try this: who is going to lend money to anyone to buy a home when the mortgage will be worthless in a few months?

Nobody!

The financial/credit system collapses so there are no real long term gains really.

My wording was awkward. If you start with a mortgage, and can hold on to the property or stuff through the crisis, you come out wealthy.

Yup.

You become 'more wealthy than your peers'. But in reality, it's crap for everyone. You become 'much less wealthy relative to everyone outside the country'.

Depends on what one values :)

You're country is probably going to rebound in ten years (mostly), but your personal assets aren't going away.

Actually the banks are slowly realizing that. They have made it impossible to open new savings accounts for instance.

> Inflation reduces the value of things priced in the currency, so the 'mortgage' is a financial product and so is worthless

Not true, the price will go up to track currency devaluation unless the price was pegged via contract or legislation. Even bread will see its price go up many times in day

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