Fiat Money Inflation in Revolutionary France, by Andrew Dickson

Fiat Money Inflation in France, by Andrew Dickson


It progressed according to a law in social physics which we may call the "law of accelerating issue and depreciation." It was comparatively easy to refrain from the first issue; it was exceedingly difficult to refrain from the second; to refrain from the third and those following was practically impossible.

It brought, as we have seen, commerce and manufactures, the mercantile interest, the agricultural interest, to ruin. It brought on these the same destruction which would come to a Hollander opening the dykes of the sea to irrigate his garden in a dry summer.

It ended in the complete financial, moral and political prostration of France-a prostration from which only a Napoleon could raise it.

So, even France in eighteenth century had its version of Paul Krugman, Ben Bernanke and quantitative easing.
It is needless too say that fiat currency inflation did not work. But it so interesting how people get seduced by this idea.