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Out of control spending by a government is always the cause of hyperinflation. The
debt ceiling had been the last remaining roadblock to unlimited federal government spending. By suspending the debt ceiling, the U.S. government has given itself a blank cheque, taking one giant leap down the road leading to the hyperinflation of the US dollar. Words: 632
So writes James Turk (www.goldmoney.com) in edited excerots from his original article* entitled Will the US dollar hyperinflate?
(NOTE: This post is presented by Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com and the free Intelligence Report newsletter (see sample here ). The article may have been edited ([ ]), abridged (…) and/or reformatted (some sub-titles and bold/italics emphases) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read.
Turk goes on to say in further edited excerpts:
The hyperinflation of a currency is typically described as an event, as if one day everything is normal and then the next day hyperinflation is manifest throughout the economy. This description explains, for example, how the hyperinflations that destroyed the currencies in Germany in the 1920s, Serbia in the 1990s and Zimbabwe more recently are generally viewed. Hyperinflations, however, are not spontaneous. They do not appear “out of the blue”. It is therefore more accurate to describe hyperinflation as a process.
There are many steps taken on the road to hyperinflation that ultimately and eventually leads to the destruction of a currency and the U.S. government recently took a big leap down that road. When it suspended the debt ceiling, which is the self-imposed limit on how much it can borrow, it removed the last remaining check on the proclivity of politicians to spend money. It abandoned the last semblance of any discipline on federal spending.
In every year since the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. federal government has been incurring an operating deficit of more than $1 trillion. Because it is spending more than it receives in revenue, it needs to borrow dollars to fund these deficits. These borrowings cause its total debt to grow, so the debt ceiling must be raised periodically to enable it to keep borrowing. The latest ceiling of $16.4 trillion was reached in January.
Rather than deal with out-of-control spending, politicians of both parties agreed to suspend the debt ceiling, meaning that there will be no limit on what the federal government can spend and borrow through May 18. On May 19, the debt ceiling will be raised to the total amount of debt outstanding as of that date, and as a consequence, at that time the debt limit must again be considered to enable more borrowing to fund what is likely to be another year in which the deficit exceeds $1 trillion. I fully expect that that this scheme will repeatedly be used to avoid facing any limit.
This mechanism eerily parallels a step taken by President Nixon in August 1971. Rather than address the financial imbalances the US government faced, he chose – in his words – to “suspend temporarily” the U.S. dollar’s constitutional link to gold. His “temporary” suspension has now lasted 42 years. This observation brings up an important point.
This current suspension of the debt ceiling is not going to be temporary. From now on, each time it comes up for consideration, I expect that the politicians will just keep extending the suspension again and again. They will always take the soft political option, just like the politicians did in the German, Serbian and Zimbabwean hyperinflations.
The debt ceiling was never much of a limit because it has been raised dozens of times over the years, but it did serve one purpose. It highlighted the lack of political will to get spending under control. Importantly, the dire financial condition of the federal government became apparent each time the ceiling was hit. The last time it was reached, the U.S. lost its Triple-A credit rating.
Out of control spending by a government is always the cause of hyperinflation. The debt ceiling had been the last remaining roadblock to unlimited federal government spending. By suspending the debt ceiling, the U.S. government has given itself a blank cheque, taking one giant leap down the road leading to the hyperinflation of the U.S. dollar.
(Editor’s Note: The author’s views and conclusions in the above article are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original post. Furthermore, the views, conclusions and any recommendations offered in this article are not to be construed as an endorsement of such by the editor.)
*http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/james-turk/will-the-us-dollar-hyperinflate.html (Published by GoldMoney; Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Written by James Turk)
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