Blue Flower

My mother lived through the German hyperinflation that followed WWI.

My father also grew up in Germany and heard the stories (he was born after the inflation ended).
 
I am a product of that hyperinflation because of how my parents reacted to the consequences of it.
 
I have studied the German hyperinflation.  I have also studied the hyperinflations in South America in the 1970's.
 
About the high inflation thing -

Most people in the first world think in terms of the high inflation in America and Europe of the 1970's.  Some people think in terms of the hyperinflation in Germany in the early 1920's.
 
The first half of the Kondratieff wave is (inherently) increasingly inflationary.  For us that culminated in the 1970's.

The second half of the Kondratieff wave (in terms of process, not time) is disinflationary (plateau phase) overall and then deflationary (depression phase).

(See explanation about hyperinflation below, near the bottom.)

This is being enhanced by the central bank action.

The central bank has a mandate for low inflation.

(Actuallyevery first-world central bank other than the American one officially has a mandate only for low inflation.)

How does the central bank avoid high inflation in modern times?

By putting the money out into the system as loans from banks.  

Why does this work?

Because loans have to be paid back.

The money does not stay in the system.

For a hyperinflation to happen, money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money, etc.

The money has to stay in the system.

In an era of government-controlled money, the central banks have full control over this!

And there is also plenty of experience with hyperinflations!

So they prevent the money from piling up by putting it into the system as loans.

One other note.

A feature of the Kondratieff wave is that during the first half of the wave, new money tends to go into consumer prices.

During the second half of the wave, new money tends to go into financial markets.

(This does not mean that high-demand items such as college educations, health care, and vehicles can't go up dramatically in price over the course of time - of course they can, and do!)

Why do the central banks think they can prevent hyperinflation permanently (simply) by putting out the new money as loans?

Because these PhD's are absolutely convinced that they can keep the economy going forever.

They figure that as long as the loan payments can continue to be made, everything is fine!

The Kondratieff wave says otherwise; it won't happen indefinitely.

But the fact that the economy will eventually wear out is not a concept to them.

(They simply do not want to accept that the economy will eventually turn down.)

But what will, in fact, eventually happen is that the economy will fall into a depression.

As that happens, more and more loan defaults will occur.

Since the money is debt-based, that means less money in the economy.

(Less ability for the banks to lend.)

Once that process really gets going, it is unlikely that the central bank will be able to keep up with it anymore.

(In fact, Fed Chairman Powell recently in effect conceded defeat for this time around.)

Once that happens, there will be a massive financial/economic implosion, thus enhancing the deflationary depression that is supposed to happen at the end of the Kondratieff wave.

Why could the inflation of the 1970's not be prevented?

Because it is inherent to the Kondratieff wave.

But the result of that inflation was that Congress passed a law banning both economic downturns and high inflations (as well as deflations).

The problem is the following.

The inflation they were dealing with was the inflation that is inherent to Phase 2 of the Kondratieff wave.  We won't see another inflation like that until Phase 2 of the next Kondratieff wave.

And by the way, although most Americans called the inflation of the 1970's a hyperinflation, it was not a true hyperinflation.

A true hyperinflation has to get up to at least about 50%/year to really get going.

And if it gets that high, it will usually go all the way (millions of percent a year).

Modern Americans have no experience with this, so they have no way of relating to it.

But my mother lived through the famous German hyperinflation of the early 1920's.

(My father was younger, but he did hear the stories from his relatives.)

And I have studied the South American hyperinflations of the 1970's.

Those kinds of (true) hyperinflations can only happen the way I described above - money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money has to pile on top of money, etc.

Doing that is illegal in the United States since the late 1970's!

(And this can really only happen in a purely paper-money system.  It cannot happen in a modern, electronic economy - explanation below.)

And I might add that the central bank keeps emphasizing that it takes both parts of its dual mandate "very seriously"!

So there is virtually no chance of a major across-the-board inflation in the United States before the big depression kicks in - and once that depression is (truly) underway, the financial/economic implosion will be MONUMENTAL!

There is no way the government or the central bank will be able to keep up with it at that point.

Not as thoroughly saturated with loans as the system is at this point, and with the MONEY being BASED on that (debt-based money)!

(I might add that it is my contention that in a modern first-world computerized economy in which most of the money is purely just digital entries that will never turn into cash, and where the central bank is also fully computerized and monitoring the money supply constantly - in an era in which all such central banks have a mandate to avoid high inflation - hyperinflation is impossible.  Why would they do that if they have full control of the money supply and can monitor it very accurately constantly?  On the other hand, deflation is a bottom-up phenomenon - once that gets going, the central banks have no control over it whatsoever.  They know that and that is why they have a target of low inflation - to try to make sure that they never get into deflation in the first place.)


The  Kondratieff wave is based on imbalances.  
 
When enough imbalances have built up during the good times, things tip over and some bad times have to happen to compensate for those imbalances.
 
The most basic imbalance during the second half of the wave is the national debt.

The national debt is in the process of going exponential.

It has been on an exponential track for decades already - but now it is actually getting close to going exponential.

See usdebtclock.org for status, upper left-hand corner.

When the national debt goes exponential, the federal government of the United States will be (utterly, totally, and completely) bankrupt.

That will be the ultimate manifestation of the consequences of the fact that economies are actually cyclical.

My focus is on what to do about it; how to deal with the consequences.