djvu A Brief History of Inflation (A Brief History of Economics Edition)

From the Roman Empire's desperate coin-clipping—reducing the silver content of the denarius until soldiers were paid in worthless slugs—to the Weimar Republic's wheelbarrows of worthless marks (a single loaf of bread costing billions), and from 1970s stagflation to today's cost-of-living crises, A Brief History of Inflation unravels the mysterious and often terrifying force that silently steals the value from your wallet. This concise, gripping narrative reveals how inflation has toppled emperors, sparked revolutions, and reshaped entire economies—often when rulers thought they were simply solving a short-term problem. Along the way, it demystifies the hidden engines of price rises: the printing presses of desperate governments, the oil shocks that cascade through every sector, the wage-price spiral that feeds on itself, and the psychological spiral of expectations that turns a flicker of inflation into a runaway inferno. The story moves from the Spanish Price Revolution (when gold and silver from the Americas flooded Europe) through the hyperinflations of the 1920s (Germany, Austria, Hungary), the post-WWII inflation in Hungary (the worst in history, with prices doubling every fifteen hours), the Great Inflation of the 1970s (which discredited Keynesianism and brought Paul Volcker's brutal interest rate cure), the lowflation of the Japanese Lost Decade, the post-2008 fears of deflation that led to quantitative easing, and the post-pandemic inflation spike that caught central bankers by surprise.

But is inflation always the enemy? This book also explores the surprising cases where moderate inflation greased the wheels of growth, and the devastating deflationary traps that crippled the Great Depression (when falling prices meant falling wages, falling demand, and falling employment in a vicious downward spiral). Packed with vivid stories of hyperinflation's absurdities—from Germans burning cash for heat to Zimbabwe's trillion-dollar banknotes (including a 100 trillion dollar note) to Venezuelans weighing bolívars instead of counting them—A Brief History of Inflationis an essential, timely guide for anyone who has ever wondered why their money buys less today than yesterday, and what central bankers, politicians, and ordinary people can actually do about it. From the gold standard to inflation targeting, from the Federal Reserve's dual mandate to the rise of cryptocurrency as a hedge, this book reveals why inflation remains the most debated and least understood phenomenon in all of economics.