We Need To Talk About Inflation: 14 Urgent Lessons from the Last 2,000 Years

HSBC senior economic adviser King (Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History) gives a historical account of global money exchanges and inflation and their impact on economies. The author asserts that the most successful currency of the last century is the U.S. dollar due to its universal acceptance. In the 19th century, many countries experienced deflation due to the increase in economic growth spurred by the industrial revolution. After that, there were short-lived inflationary skirmishes around the world in the early 1950s, rapid rises in prices in the late 1960s, and inflation in the 1970s and beyond. The 2008 global financial crisis showed that an economic collapse was possible, even when inflation had apparently been tamed. This book documents public attitudes toward money, central bank policies, the impact of governments and democracies on economies, and the needs required of central banks to responsibly predict and control inflation. The author calls for education and economic information to be more equitably available to all people in a democracy. This title will likely be of primary interest to economists and general readers who want to know more about this subject.