Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Hyperinflation

Apparently, hyperinflation is a theme in the Dilbert comic strip, as the inflation rate in Elbonia hits one billion percent per day.  Today's strip shows the price for something increasing a hundred-fold over the course of a minute.
I left this comment at the Mises Economics blog where I found the link:

I suspect this qualifies as a nitpick, but today's Dilbert shows the price of a small fetid water inflating 100-fold in a minute. An inflation rate of one billion percent per day works out to 1.1256% per minute. At that rate, a 100-fold increase would take a little over six and three-quarters hours. (6 hours, 51 minutes, 25.7 seconds).

An inflation rate of one hundred times (ten thousand percent) per minute would be very hard to deal with.

Inflation and compound interest are examples of exponential curves.  Their tendency to grow to very large values from very small initial steps takes many people by surprise. 

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