Noah Smith

It's real.

I mean, hyperinflation happens.

There's a lot we don't know about hyperinflation, but our best guess, okay, is that hyperinflation, when you get inflation, not of like 8%, but of like a thousand percent or something, you know, this hyperinflation, our best guess is that it happens when the central bank just starts printing money to buy however much, you know, debt the government wants to issue.

So when you start issuing government essentially a blank check from money printing, that's when hyperinflation happens.

I think Trump's instinct is probably to do something like that, to simply start the printing presses, you know, have the central bank buy infinite government debt that he can then use for populist goodies.

And by the time it catches up with us and we screw ourselves, he'll be dead.

You know, and this is what happened with Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez started this process.

And then by the time it really caught up with them and destroyed their economy, he was dead.

And so Trump is an old man.

You know, he's not going to live that long.

And so I think maybe this is what he would want to do.

But I think everyone else sort of understands like J.D.

Vance would then be the American Maduro stuck with this, you know, rapidly expanding inflation from monetary financing of the debt.

And I don't think he wants that.

Well, so the first thing that they do is to cut interest rates.

So you can see that happening, right?

So when the Fed prints money, quote unquote, it uses it first and foremost to buy bonds.

And you can see that happening and you can see interest rates go down from Fed actions.

So you can see quantitative easing.