Keyboard worrier

Friday, November 02, 2007

Twang money - again


Fiat currency can be expanded at will, but in a credit crunch can contract as easily, so I've previously nicknamed it "twang money". But it turns out there actually once was a medium of exchange known as "twang money" - the Hungarian pengo. It ended up as the worst case of inflation in history: someone writes in to today's Daily Mail (page 77) to say that by 1946, all the Hungarian banknotes in circulation, taken together, were worth one-thousandth of a US cent.

However, consider the potential uses of many tons of durable paper with run-resistant colours: wallpaper, sweet wrappers, firelighters... So for me, the story is about the buying opportunity when pessimism ignores intrinsic value.

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