Weimar USA followed by fascism?
More and more people are warning that there’s a risk that there’ll be hyperinflation in the US soon. I don’t know how likely this is, but it sounds plausible.
I wonder whether the US would be likely to follow in the footsteps of Weimar Germany, insomuch as a post-hyperinflationary society would make it easy for groups with a fascist-like ideology to emerge.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think history ever repeats itself completely, but glancing at the Wikipedia articles on Fascism and the Economics of fascism there are various things that I think could appeal to a population that felt they had lost everything due to globalisation and the errors of the banks:
During the Great Depression, Mussolini promoted active state intervention in the economy. He denounced the contemporary “supercapitalism” that he claimed began in 1914 as a failure due to its alleged decadence, support for unlimited consumerism and intention to create the “standardization of humankind”.
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reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital,
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In most cases, fascists discouraged or banned foreign trade; fascists believed that too much international trade would make the national economy dependent on international capital, and therefore vulnerable to international economic sanctions. Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.
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Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering. […] Fascist governments introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.
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While in power, the Nazis created social welfare programs to deal with the large numbers of unemployed. However, those programs were neither egalitarian nor universal, but instead residual, excluding multiple minority groups and certain other people whom they felt were incapable of helping themselves
Hopefully the return of fascism can be averted – although bits of the ideology can look appealing at first, fascist countries always end up as dreadful dictatorships.
Thomas, if someone as balanced and informed as you (except when you’re splitting up England!) can consider hyperinflation to be a possibility in the USA, then I am worried … I would have thought it was ‘unthinkable’.
Have you noticed how many foreigners there are who hold US debt? If they all dump it, the currency will collapse. So it’s definitely not unthinkable.
Nobody who holds US debt wants the US to crash, not even China. They’re too great a market.
True. The problem is that as soon as one major actor panics, the rest will follow.