The end of money (as a store of value)

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Zimbabweans pushed up stocks by more than 300,000 percent in 2007, handily beating inflation of 24,000 percent. The point is that it didn't pay to keep cash in the bank or anywhere else for that matter. The stock market at least offered the opportunity to invest in businesses with tangible assets that appreciate with inflation.

Perhaps what will be different this time is that while most people will want the convenience that paper money and electronic payments provide, fewer of them will trust money as a store of value. What that means for individual commodities is anybody's guess. But, unless 1) we are miraculously delivered into a time of plenty by huge, unexpected discoveries of the basic building blocks of civilization or 2) people suddenly en masse embrace an abstemious lifestyle (or are forced to embrace it by a depression), it seems possible that one time-honored role of money, that is, as a store of value, will disappear for an extended period as the world comes to grips with resource limits that are only now beginning to convulse our societies.

http://www.energybulletin.net/45240.html

Posted by Pithaly at 8:53 PM  

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