This Riddler comes curtesy of Roger Lowenstein, our nation's bestselling financial historian. Today's questions are based on Ways & Mean, Roger's must-read book about the financing of the Civil War.
The interesting thing about the debt levels incurred during the Civil War and the story is somewhat similar during WW2, is that the US economy easily recovered and saw significant growth making the debt almost irrelevant. The economic growth, I believe, spurred by the shift in consumption from war supplies to consumer products and services.
Our new way of war, since Desert Storm, is to hide funding for the war with off balance sheet funding and with it the decline in non war consumption declines that traditionally came with wars. The result being a lack of shared sacrifice during the war and the failure of a post war economic boom in non war consumption, as we just witnessed coming out of Covid.
It's cumulative inflation over the 4.something years.
Agree!
best ,Larry
Does the question answered with "80 percent inflation during the Civil War" match with the graph below it? Graph seems to show much lower values?
The interesting thing about the debt levels incurred during the Civil War and the story is somewhat similar during WW2, is that the US economy easily recovered and saw significant growth making the debt almost irrelevant. The economic growth, I believe, spurred by the shift in consumption from war supplies to consumer products and services.
Our new way of war, since Desert Storm, is to hide funding for the war with off balance sheet funding and with it the decline in non war consumption declines that traditionally came with wars. The result being a lack of shared sacrifice during the war and the failure of a post war economic boom in non war consumption, as we just witnessed coming out of Covid.