LynAlden on Nostr: The really sad thing about constant currency devaluation throughout the world is that ...

The really sad thing about constant currency devaluation throughout the world is that it benefits those who have the most access to cheap credit at the expense of those who do not.

People on the lower end of the income spectrum in Egypt are generally dealing with cash. Their wages and savings get debased, and they own fewer hard assets, so they have fewer offsets. Their ability to buy imported goods diminishes, their ability to travel outside of Egypt diminishes, and their costs in general rise.

People on the higher end of the income spectrum in Egypt have access to foreign bank accounts and/or have multi-year domestic property loans, which are basically currency shorts. They mitigate the impact from the ongoing devaluation, or in some cases benefit by it.

As a tangible example, last year I took out a 7-year loan or currency short against the Egyptian pound, and used it to buy a villa that houses a 9-person extended family (7 when my husband and I are not there). The money supply goes up by 20% per year but my interest rate is 3%, which is an ultra-cheap long-term currency short. Within the first six months of the term, the Egyptian pound was already cut in half relative to the dollar. Who knows what the exchange rate will be over the next 6.5 years.

The past four decades of global Fiat World have been like a game of Blackjack. In Blackjack, you try to get to 21 without going over. In Fiat World, you get into a position so that you can take out low interest debt and buy scarcer assets with it, and you do that as much as you can but without going bust in a downturn. The major governments can do that the most. The big banks are next. The big funds and asset managers and public corporations are next. The wealthy individuals are next. Then the middle class, and then the working class and the poor.

And the global aspect of Fiat World is important. An asset allocator can operate globally, so among the 160+ currencies out there, they can arbitrage them. They short a currency with negative real interest rates, and buy good assets somewhere with it. I personally did it in Egypt not to make money (we don't plan to sell for the foreseeable future) but to ensure good housing for the family at modest expense. But global firms do this around the world to make money. As the global economy got more and more financialized over the past four decades, a lot of professional talent shifted from engineering or medicine or wherever else and moved toward financial arbitrage.

Weak money financializes everything else. Strong money can de-financialize everything else.