Inflation is the tool of choice for creating a totalitarianism, whether wittingly employed or unintentionally created by mismanagement. Inflation wipes out fixed incomes and savings. People on salaries with savings accounts will find themselves pauperized overnight. Literal survival becomes contingent on “getting close” to those in power, who will provide the chosen few with indexed incomes or simply goods in kind.

Despots like Mugabe exploit this desperation to create units which are loyal, not to the institutions, but to the leader maximus personally. Once inflation bites there will be no shortage of people willing, nay clamoring, to do the bidding of the high and mighty. So from one point of view printing money is a coup de etat by those who control the currency. It gives them the ability to destroy all legitimacy save that of minter of money.

Of course it can’t last. Sooner or later it must all come tumbling down. But that’s tomorrow. Today it’s all sweet.