By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate,
secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of
their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate
arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it
actually enriches some …. Those to whom the system brings windfalls …. become
“profiteers” who are the object of the hatred … the process of wealth-getting
degenerates into a gamble and a lottery .. Lenin was certainly right. There is
no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to
debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of
economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which
not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Lord Keynes, 1921
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