Fiat currencies have had nearly a 46 year run of success. But with cryptocurrencies ‘all the rage,’ what Deutsche Bank Strategists Jim Reid and Craig Nicol call ‘inherently unstable’ fiat currency system without any commodity backing might be coming to an end, they assert.
The end of a demographic trend will usher in another inflationary period, Deutsche Bank asserts The idea of tying the supply of money to a commodity such as gold was that it kept government spending in check because money was in limited supply.
The US abandoned the gold standard in 1971, anchoring the currency’s value, not to a commodity but rather the faith in a government. This was followed by a sharp rise in inflation resulting in mortgage rates rising to near 20% annually by 1981. The resulting debasement of currency value and loss of buying power might have ended the fiat monetary system if it were not for the deflationary period that came along in the 1980s.
This gentle deflationary trend is about to come to an end, Reid and Nicol think.
This post was published at FinancialSense on 11/06/2017.
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