Friday 1 August 2008

Wealth destruction through paper creation

Here's the 'thought for the day' from NZ's Foundation for Economic Growth:

    Since the beginning of the year almost all the stock markets of the world have gone down by around 20%, according to the latest issue of the Economist covering 48 major countries.
    The Dow by 15%, Japan (Nikkei) by 15%, China 49%, Britain 20%, Euro 28%, France 27%, Australia 22% and on and on. Venezuela gained 3% in its own currency but lost 34% when measured in $US.
    When we understand that all countries are also inflating their paper currencies by 10% to 15% or more thus reducing the value of their currency, we can see that the loss of wealth is truly impressive for the last six months.
    As the Central Banks work more and more closely together to "solve" their inflation problems so they are beginning to synchronise their times of boom and bust.
We live in interesting times, indeed.

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