Central Bank Digital Currencies Would Bring Hyperinflation

2.7.23 - Is Hyperinflation Next?

Gold last traded at $1,870 an ounce. Silver at $22.14 an ounce.

There are many excuses often used to explain inflation. However, the fact is that there is no such thing as "cost push inflation" or "commodity inflation." Inflation is not an increase in prices, it is the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency.

Cost-push inflation is more units of currency going to relatively scarce real assets. The same can be said about all other, from commodities to demand and my favourite, "supply chain disruption". More units of currency going to the same goods and services.

The monster inflation we have endured these years first arrived through asset inflation and then through consumer prices. Now, governments and statistical bodies are tweaking the calculation of CPI to disguise the loss of purchasing power of the currency and central banks had to hike rates after the disaster created in 2020, when the massive increase in money supply went to finance bloated government spending and created the mess we live today.

Central banks know that inflation is a monetary phenomenon and that is why they are hiking rates and tightening as fast as governments allow them. However, central banks have lost a significant amount of an already low credibility by first ignoring the inflation risk and later using the base effect and transitory excuse, only to react late and slowly