The Depressing Effects of Devaluation

Below is our response today to a post by Paul Krugman on his NY Times blog regarding the experience of the British during their devaluation after WWI.  We thought this encapsulated version of the basic TOSOC argument might be useful to you.

Right on.  Another example might be  the depression during the Grant administration in the 1870's.  Deflation brought the dollar to its pre-war value in gold, but at a high economic and social cost. 

Beyond this, however, is the view from the other side of capitalism.

First, what we see in the world today are poverty policies, not austerity policies.  Note the soup kitchens in Greece, for example.  Germany should be ashamed.

Second, on the other side, we see the problem this way:  we cannot achieve contradictory monetary goals with only one currency.  Policies targeted to help our lenders (like China and Japan) may not be good for our banks.  Policies to help our banks may not be good for our poor.  And so on for each of the diverse populations that use our currency.

Only one policy can be implemented through a single currency at a time, and for now we have chosen policies that save the rich.

On the other side of capitalism, we want to see multiple currencies for separate populations  so that we can implement multiple monetary policies.  The policy for each currency could then be adjusted relatively independently to help the population of users of that currency.  All the groups that need separate monetary policies could then be given separate policies.

tosoc.org