Points you all made are valid. But that still does not explain why there is no hyper-inflation....regardless of all the over spending by gov’t, printing Trillions of excess dollars, and borrowing to spend.
I learned the real reason why there is no hyper-inflation from a German economist going way back, on Louis Rukeyser TV show. No one believed this economist when he declared there will be no hyper-inflation as far as the eye can see. Note that we had just come out of the double digit inflation of Carter era when I hear his forecast.
And here is the reason...inflation requires two events, excess currency floating around and under-supply of goods to soak up the currency. For the last 25 years there has been a phenomenal increase in manufacturing capacity in non-western countries. China, India, Brazil, S. Africa have increased manufacturing capacity by orders of magnitude during this period. Right now, as we speak, manufacturing is operating UNDER-capacity in those countries. They are supplying all the goods and services necessary to soak up all excess currencies being printed. Until demand for goods and services exceeds the ability to supply, it is impossible to have hyper-inflation. Only commodities in short supply such as oil and food will see inflation. But not most other manufactured goods.
These two episodes are almost always ignored by those fervently calling for a gold standard.