High life | 15 January 2011

Gstaad

Back in 1975 Adam Fergusson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published a very important book with a very apt modern title, When Money Dies. It was about the nightmare of Weimar hyperinflation, something our so-called leaders might well think about, which of course they will not. We are so dumbed-down by reality and talent shows on the idiot box, why bother to bring up unpleasant subjects? Only recently I read somewhere that the obnoxious John Prescott defended the war criminal Tony Blair and his party’s record, which in a way is not unlike arms manufacturers being praised by Greens for population control. People are simply too dumb, too cowed, or too interested in celebrity goings-on to care about what a slob like Prescott bloviates about. What they should have done is throw him overboard — he was on a freebie cruise — but instead they listened in silence to his bad-taste jokes and defence of Blair.

Inflation is what kills wealth, unless the goodies are in property, ships, or other such solid matter, but let’s not get too academic about it. The only ones inflation helps are debtors, which are most Western governments nowadays. No wonder they don’t mind piling on the debt. But for us normal folk, inflation can be a very big pain in the you-know-where. Did you know that one pound sterling back in 1923 is the equivalent of £623 today? One dollar back then could buy what $220 dollars buys today. Just think about it. You could give a nice-looking German girl one dollar as a tip, and hope that she might let you walk her home after she’d finished working at the restaurant. Girls back then were moral and a walk was the equivalent of a f*** today.