Review of "Dying of Money"

Below is a review of Dying of Money, a quintessential study you cannot afford, by Pipa Malmgren, founder of Principalis

Poke around Pipa's site; she is is an insider, mostly listening, but inside.

Dying of Money by Jens O. Parssons

As I have travelled around the world, I have found that serious investors, who really do their homework, have dusted off one of the best books on inflation that has ever been produced: Jens O Parsson’s “Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations”. It is now selling for $239 USD on Amazon but an original edition is on Amazon at $749 USD. It is almost impossible to find at a reasonable price. Perhaps the inflated price tells us something about the inflation pressures building in the system?

Parsson reminds us that inflation happens the same way every single time.  A speculative bubble bursts so government floods the system with money. This makes asset prices rise (stock markets always explode before the inflation becomes apparent). The velocity of money stays at zero for a prolonged period and then, suddenly, it explodes. This makes the stock market go up even more as confidence come back. Everybody notices asset prices rising and loves it. Nobody notices the fact that costs start rising faster.

{Have to interject. Does this sound familiar, right now?} 

Margins get crushed – corporate and personal. The acid erosion of inflation starts to bite and the stock market collapses except this time the government cannot throw money at the problem because of the inflation. So, the market is forced to deal with the bad investment decisions that led to the initial speculative bubble. The inflation prolongs the day of reckoning but does not eliminate it. 

Perhaps the single most powerful idea he presents is that Inflation does not fix deflation. It’s a bit like love: the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. Adding hate does not make the situation better. Instead it leads to volatile swings of emotion. In love you might start to say “I love you” and I hate you”. In markets we find episodes of inflation history preoccupy policymakers in the same dialogue every time: “deal with the deflation””deal with the inflation”. When this happened in the 1970’s it was called “Stop Go Policy”. Buckle your seat belts because that’s the road we are now on!

The trends of the past and present are interwoven. There is nothing new under the sun, as Terence wrote. We merely change our hats and sunglasses. The questions as what to do is interesting, but not academic. 


One can point out that gold has recently settled 6%; but, is it safe from confiscation if you buy? Probably not, the way we are going. You could have it in a European account if you have sizable assets and want to keep it that way. Junk silver is great for the rest of us.


George Soros, and you can rely on his public statements as being the opposite of what is true, but sometimes he may actually say something not self-serving, advises investing Africa and predicts money will flow there in the future. 


The problem is security, of course. Big money can merely buy countries, I suppose. So, think land, guns, peanut butter.