By Melanie Wilcox
In an interview Wednesday with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer, billionaire and investor Charlie Munger said inflation kills democracies.
“Inflation is a very serious subject,” Munger said. “You can argue it’s the way democracies die.” (RELATED: ‘Showering Itself With Praise’: Republicans Slam Biden Admin Over Failure To Address ‘Another Month Of Record-High Inflation’)
“Inflation is a very serious subject,” Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman & Daily Journal Chairman Charlie Munger says. “You can argue it’s the way democracies die.” More: pic.twitter.com/mZsNhmSmIC
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) February 16, 2022
Munger said it’s a “huge danger” once a populace “learns it can vote itself money.” He hypothesized that over the next 100 years, it will be a “safe assumption” the currency will fall to zero and said it will be a “dangerous environment.”
Munger attributed Adolf Hitler’s rise in what was an “advanced and civilized country” —Germany— to the Great Depression and Weimar inflation. He also attributed the fall of the Roman Republic to its currency steadily increasing for hundreds of years.
“Eventually the whole damn Roman Empire collapsed,” he said. “It’s the biggest long-range danger we have probably apart from nuclear war.”
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to a near 40-year high year-over-year increase of 7.5% as of January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Feb. 10.
