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Comment by neffy | Hacker News Reader

It's complicated. Hyperinflation occurs generally when the banking system's regulation is gets out of control and goes into a lending/money creation spiral. That can happen very quickly - within several month. All things considered what's more likely to happen at the moment though is a monetary implosion, as massive debt defaults occur destroying the money in the banking system. Which is why people are muttering about Great Depressions.

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You can print money indefinitely and not cause inflation as long as there is an equal demand for what you're printing.

USD demand is very high globally and domestically right now. Let's hope that doesn't change over night.

Demand for dollars won't evaporate overnight. The thing about being a reserve currency is in a crisis, the entire levered world is short your currency.

That, combined with the fact that it's not like any major developed economy is doing that much better, means US goods, services and financial assets are still pretty competitive with the rest of the world.

The dollar is up 40% vs the lows of 2008. When DXY is back at 70, it's time to worry about a crack in the dollar reserve system.

https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/TVC-DXY/

The worry isn't demand dropping over night, since in that case the Fed could just sell the assets it's been buying. The worry is that the value of the Fed's assets will drop overnight.

This is inaccurate; most economists think we're most likely to see deflation over the next several months as demand collapses. Considering the position of the dollar, a "monetary implosion" like you're describing is still exceedingly unlikely.

Most economists also thought we had banished volatility, until 2008 happened.

I wouldn’t put too much trust in that expert class given their track record.

"Most economists" never believed that. Lots of people in finance did, sure, but they're not economists.

"Well, unquestionably, housing prices are up quite a bit; I think it's important to note that fundamentals are also very strong. We've got a growing economy, jobs, incomes. We've got very low mortgage rates. We've got demographics supporting housing growth. We've got restricted supply in some places. So it's certainly understandable that prices would go up some. I don't know whether prices are exactly where they should be, but I think it's fair to say that much of what's happened is supported by the strength of the economy." - Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed, in 2005.

https://mises.org/library/ben-bernanke-was-incredibly-uncann...

What I don't understand is how people find it very difficult to admit that economists can be wrong sometimes and that their word is not gospel.

I don’t understand how your quote from Ben Bernanke is relevant. Where in the quote does Bernanke say that we’ve fully eliminated volatility? And how is he representative of “most economists?”

I’ve said in other parts of the thread that economists can, in fact, be wrong sometimes. I just find the people making completely unjustifiable assertions about the economy, while simultaneously castigating the economics profession as some cabal of out-of-touch elites who can’t be trusted, unconvincing, when I know that the vast majority of economists are simply researchers trying to understand the world and how to improve it.

Most economists don't understand how banks write off debt.

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