A few observations by Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Sigmund Freud, and Alan Greenspan.
Are you familiar with this quote from Ernest Hemingway from 1935?
„The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.“ – Ernest Hemingway: Notes on the Next War – A Serious Topical Letter. Esquire, September 1935.
Ruin generally sets in „two ways,” as Hemingway puts it elsewhere, namely: “Gradually and then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway: Fiesta—The Sun Also Rises.
Did you also know that, to this day, there is no generally accepted theory of inflation? This is indeed the case when one looks at a central bank like the U.S. Federal Reserve, whose mandate includes price stability. „(F)ormer Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo, a technical expert if there ever was one, made headlines in 2017 for saying that his central bank has no coherent theory of inflation: ‚The substantive point is that we do not, at present, have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well to be of use for the business of real-time monetary policymaking.‘ That’s somewhat distressing, given that the Fed’s reason for existing is ‚real-time monetary policymaking.‘ This is a little like finding out neither of the pilots on your flight know how to land the plane.“ – Steve Mann: Notes Toward a Theory of Inflation. Strange Matters
During inflation, the phenomenon of money’s declining purchasing power can be observed. Regarding the diminishing value of money, William S. Burroughs says in one passage: „The scion of a well-known banking family once told me a family secret. When a certain stage of responsibility and awareness has been reached by a young banker he is taken to a room lined with family portraits in the middle of which is an ornate gilded toilet. Here he comes every day to defecate surrounded by the family portraits until he realizes that money is shit. And what does the money machine eat to shit it out? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity. There was a time when the machine ate in moderation from a plentiful larder and what it ate was replaced. Now the machine is eating faster much faster than what it eats can be replaced. That is why by its nature money is worth always less. People want money to buy what the machine eats to shit money out. The more the machine eats the less remains. So your money buys always less.“ – The Job – Interviews with William S. Burroughs
To protect themselves against inflation—the loss of money’s value—some people buy gold. And it is interesting, in light of Burroughs’s story, that Sigmund Freud writes in *Character and Anal Erotism* (1908): „(A)ccording to ancient Babylonian doctrine gold is ‘the faeces of Hell’ (Mammon = ilu manman).“
The recently deceased former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, considered the “faeces of hell” superior to the leading paper currency, the U.S. dollar: “Gold is a currency. It is still by all evidence the premier currency where no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it.“ See here.
Don’t let yourself be ruined; preserve your youth and stay cheerful.