Some countries will do the former, either by an outright failure to repay their debts or via the more subtle approach of inflation and currency depreciation.
Stocks have shown signs of concern since late June in reaction to subtle indications of inflation and the likelihood of the Fed raising rates.
The slides changed quickly, ranging from straightforward charts on job losses to none-too-subtle visual messages: inflation, symbolized by a short stack of silvery chump change, side by side with growth in Medicaid and education spending, rendered as piles of gold bullion; a scale showing the "people" on one side, vastly outweighed by the "special interests" on the other.
And the signs that we have reached our limits, though clear enough, are also fairly subtle: a modest increase in inflation, mainly due to oil but with some uptick in the "core" rate that supposedly excludes transitory factors, an acceleration of wage increases to a rate a bit more than productivity growth.
Workers tend to resist nominal cuts in pay more fiercely than they do the subtler erosion of their income through inflation.
While American importers of Chinese goods will feel the squeeze, the effect on American consumers may be more subtle and the overall impact on United States inflation may be minimal.
However, the 2014 Ontake eruption had subtle but detectable preparatory processes, such as inflation of deep and shallow sources (Miyaoka and Takagi 2016; Murase et al. 2016) and earthquakes in the conduit system (Kato et al. 2015).
John Maynard Keynes succinctly summarized how destabilizing inflation can be: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
Decades ago, John Maynard Keynes succinctly summarized how destabilizing inflation can be: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency.
The latest research also suggests that there could be more subtle problems at work, like the proliferation of grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences, which provides another incentive for students to leave STEM majors.
