Live data from Hacker News

Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

jpkoning.blogspot.com

101–110 of 246 posts

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#101
post #100

If this second thing last paragraph doesn't make your skin crawl then I don't know what will: "Cash, which is awkward to immobilize for policy reasons, will be gone in a decade or two, leaving the public entirely dependent on bank deposits and fintech balances which, thanks to digitization and automation, can be easily controlled by the authorities. To rein in a jump in inflation, central bankers will require commerc…

[deleted]

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#102
post #27

Fascinating piece of financial history I hadn't heard about. Imagine your government telling you to literally take scissors to your money, it's like a weird mix between arts & crafts hour and monetary policy. Though I suppose we're already halfway there with our modern central banks, just without the satisfying snip-snip sounds. The Finnish experiment failing because people just deposited their cash in banks first is…

Turkey dropped six zeroes off their currency in the 2000s. Technically, you could describe that as cutting 999,9999/1,000,000 of their money supply. (Especially if they had done a funny dance like the Finnish, where you would use some scissors to only keep the tiny top left corner of your old notes, and can exchange that for new ones.) In practice, people saw the Turkish currency reform as merely a cosmetic change, n…

>In practice, people saw the Turkish currency reform as merely a cosmetic change, not an actually reduction in the money supply.

Because it is just cosmetic. Governments chronically think they can directly legislate more value into existence. They fail to understand that currency is just an intermediary for trading labor.

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#103
post #100

If this second thing last paragraph doesn't make your skin crawl then I don't know what will: "Cash, which is awkward to immobilize for policy reasons, will be gone in a decade or two, leaving the public entirely dependent on bank deposits and fintech balances which, thanks to digitization and automation, can be easily controlled by the authorities. To rein in a jump in inflation, central bankers will require commerc…

[deleted]

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#104
post #100

If this second thing last paragraph doesn't make your skin crawl then I don't know what will: "Cash, which is awkward to immobilize for policy reasons, will be gone in a decade or two, leaving the public entirely dependent on bank deposits and fintech balances which, thanks to digitization and automation, can be easily controlled by the authorities. To rein in a jump in inflation, central bankers will require commerc…

I'm quite confident that governments aren't that powerful.

They can issue money, and manage their currency. But I've never heard about any government actually controlling what currency people use. Not even extremely authoritarian ones.

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#105
post #100

If this second thing last paragraph doesn't make your skin crawl then I don't know what will: "Cash, which is awkward to immobilize for policy reasons, will be gone in a decade or two, leaving the public entirely dependent on bank deposits and fintech balances which, thanks to digitization and automation, can be easily controlled by the authorities. To rein in a jump in inflation, central bankers will require commerc…

Indeed makes my skin crawl. How can one reasonably protect himself from such draconian freezing? Asking for reasonably, not bunker full of gold bars.

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#107
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK historical investigation: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9781557758897/ch07... - written in 2000, but you can see on this graph https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni... how flat it is from 1992 to 2020. That's a very good record for any piece of policy. Inflation control works for controlling business cycle inflation. However, it's not perfect and the COVID+war shock resulted in u…

Now show the UK plot for the 2010s. Also, show the one for Japan. It's easy to cherry pick data to show whatever you want. It doesn't constitute strong data for a casual and reliable link between interest rates and inflation.

The second link https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni... is from 1960 to 2023.

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#108

I wonder what the cleansing element of it in Finland was, given that they voted to join the Axis.

you mean WWII? If so, this is just wrong, no-one in Finland "voted" to join the Axis, she was not technically a part of Axis and didn't want to side with Germany at all. GB and Sweden were first asked but they weren't able to help in the defence from Soviet Union. AFAIK they weren't fighting anywhere but their own territory

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#109
post #60
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turkey dropped six zeroes off their currency in the 2000s. Technically, you could describe that as cutting 999,9999/1,000,000 of their money supply. (Especially if they had done a funny dance like the Finnish, where you would use some scissors to only keep the tiny top left corner of your old notes, and can exchange that for new ones.) In practice, people saw the Turkish currency reform as merely a cosmetic change, n…

This is one of those measures that hyperinflation countries have to adopt for sanity, re-numbering the money. The surprising case that worked is the Brazilian "Real": by renaming the currency as well as switching it to semi-controlled exchange rates, inflation was drastically reduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real > Combined with all previous currency changes in the country's history, this reform made the…

Renaming didnt drastically reduce inflation. If it were that easy everybody would do it. It just allowed the government to reduce inflationary expectations while they did the legwork of throttling spending, etc.

If they hadnt done the legwork to reduce inflationary pressures this parlor trick would not have worked.

And, arguably, if they hadnt done it at all, inflation would still have gone down simply by reducing the inflationary pressures.

Re: Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

#110
post #27

Fascinating piece of financial history I hadn't heard about. Imagine your government telling you to literally take scissors to your money, it's like a weird mix between arts & crafts hour and monetary policy. Though I suppose we're already halfway there with our modern central banks, just without the satisfying snip-snip sounds. The Finnish experiment failing because people just deposited their cash in banks first is…

Turkey dropped six zeroes off their currency in the 2000s. Technically, you could describe that as cutting 999,9999/1,000,000 of their money supply. (Especially if they had done a funny dance like the Finnish, where you would use some scissors to only keep the tiny top left corner of your old notes, and can exchange that for new ones.) In practice, people saw the Turkish currency reform as merely a cosmetic change, n…

Brazil has cut 3 zeroes from the currency many times.

It's actually no big deal if you change the currency name. Cutting the zeroes isn't supposed to have any impact except on making prices easier to write, so you only need to avoid confusion.

Post reply on HN