MarketWatch-Project Syndicate/Diane Coyle/8-16-2022

“Until this year, inflation in advanced economies like the United States and the United Kingdom had been so low for so long that one needed to be well into middle age to remember what living through the price surges of the late 1970s was like. It was bad.… But the headline numbers do not reveal the toll that high inflation takes.”

USAGOLD note: Market analysts tend to crunch the numbers without giving much thought to the net effect of economic maladjustment – like inflation – on daily life and the culture in which it occurs. Coyle makes reference to the 1970s and the German nightmare inflation of the 1920s, which continues, she says, to have “an impact on economic policy-making to this day.” Too, we would attribute a large proportion of the robust demand for gold and silver coins over the past year to older investors who remember the debilitating effects of the 1970s stagflation – and how well investors did who purchased those items in the early part of the decade.