Hyperinflation is usually defined as an inflation rate of 50% or more per MONTH. Anything is possible, but the US has never had anything like that in its history.
My concern is that if the dollar loses its role as the reserve currency in international transactions, and the rest of the world no longer want to hold dollars, we could see much higher rates then we ever seen.
“My concern is that if the dollar loses its role as the reserve currency in international transactions, and the rest of the world no longer want to hold dollars, we could see much higher rates then we ever seen.”
The reserve currency aspect may be overrated. People regard the dollar as a safe haven for reasons other than that. Our huge bond market and highly developed banking system are very important to foreign investors and foreign banks.
We might have been better off if we hadn’t made the dollar the reserve currency at Bretton Woods. It put us in what is known as the Triffin Dilemma, a conflict between our domestic needs and the eagerness of foreign banks to hold massive dollar balances. There’s more to Triffin than that but you can look it up.
Keynes had warned against making the dollar the reserve currency and advocated something like the Special Drawing Rights that the IMF ended up creating anyway. If we weren’t the reserve currency we probably could have maintained the dollar’s link to gold and avoided the inflation of the 1970s. That inflation actually started by the late 1950s it just didn’t show up dramatically until after Nixon scrapped Bretton Woods in 1971.