The Root of the Wall Street Debacle

FrontPageMagazine ^ | 10 feb 09 | Theodore Dalrymple

[rellimpank]

There is no finer way to destroy bourgeois society, said Lenin, than to debauch the currency, a policy that he therefore favoured.

A great deal of debauchery has gone on since Lenin’s day, not necessarily with revolutionary intentions. Whether it was at all avoidable, at least at an acceptable price, is a question I do not enter into; but that it has had an effect on people’s conduct, and even on their character, seems to me to be very likely.

When I was growing up (and I am not yet an ancient man), many of the coins we used were a hundred years old, and some were a hundred and thirty years old. Occasionally, indeed, one would find a pre-Victorian coin amongst one’s change. This was not entirely absurd: for, to take a single example, it cost only two and a half times as much to post a letter as it had a hundred and twenty years earlier. Now it costs 77.8 times as much in nominal terms. Most of the debauchery of the currency, then, has occurred in my lifetime.

[BlackVeil]

He is right, the way that paper currencies inflate has taken away all incentive to save. This, in turn, changes our culture.