Originally Posted By: tonyc
I guess I'm not going to get an answer on where evidence of this mythical runaway 50% inflation


I give up on providing you with evidence. You don't want to accept commodity prices as evidence, though probably nothing is a better measure of inflation than the price of silver, gold, and currency exchange vs. the Swiss Franc (less so know as they are mistakenly devaluing that). All these are hugely up in price since the bailouts began. It's fine with me if you don't believe that inflation is happening. You asked a question about mortgages and financing, and I thought you might find this hedge strategy interesting.

Originally Posted By: tonyc
The portion I highlighted gets to the heart of the matter, which is that just as foolish borrowers get in over their head, lenders don't have a perfect record either, and it's only the lender in a loan transaction who's required to be trained in matters of finance and to recognize credit risks. Lenders ought to do their job, and if they don't, they ought to absorb a good portion of the financial penalty that comes from not doing their job. Inflation ends up being a convenient way to do this.


This "justification" is basically saying that when the banks lower their lending standards too far, thus assuming too much risk, we should bail them out by devaluing the currency rather than letting them go out of business as they should. Of course, when things go well, we'll let the banks keep all the profits. Its another way of socializing losses and privatizing gains, which is the exact kind of corruption we have today. Calling it "moral" is appalling.

Inflation steals from people who have saved by reducing the value of their savings. I don't think an Austrian-school economist would find this acceptable, nor would a libertarian find it moral. In fact, I think they would argue that this kind of thinking is exactly the problem with fiat currency. It allows the government to preferentially protect some market participants (banks) at the expense of the others (savers).