Stuff That Interests Me

“Pound crashes to weakest level since 1985 in blow to Truss” ran the headline on the Telegraph website yesterday.“The Bank of England had one job today”, as economist Shaun Richards put it, “which was to talk up the pound and instead their waffling sees it at US $1.14.” Theresa May Flash Crash aside, that’s a 37-year low.And that’s measuring it against the dollar. If you measure the pound’s purchasing power against essential basics such as energy or houses, its performance has been way more woeful.It’s not just the pound, even if it is one of the worst offenders. It’s all fiat money. I’ve been banging on about it for 20 years but I may as well bang on some more: fiat money and its devaluation is the greatest and most pernicious intergenerational theft in history. Devaluing your currency boosts assets but devalues labour When you devalue money, among numerous other things, you devalue salaries, which is to devalue labour. All the young have is their labour. You boost the value of assets meanwhile, which is wha