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This is the exact same thing that happened in Iraq after the first Gulf War back in 1991.

The northern part of the country, defacto-ruled by the Kurds had their own version of the Iraqi dinar, known as the Swiss dinar, as it had been printed by a Swiss bank note printer.

Due to the sanctions the central Iraqi government had to resort to locally printed bank notes of poorer quality for new notes. However, these notes couldn't reach Iraqi Kurdistan which had a fixed money supply. The Swiss dinar was soon worth 150 of the new Iraqi dinars.

Both of these have since been demonetized and replaced with a unified Iraqi-dinar, after the toppling of Saddam's government.



Well, following this view, I suppose that there is not point in sanctioning Russia as they are threatening them, as sanctions can't cause inflation.


Russia had double digit inflation rate in 2015 after sanctions over Ukraine came into effect. It was only kept below 5% through a combination of devaluation, austerity and high interest rates, all of which have ramifications.

Americans love to complain about their 7% inflation rate in 2021, and that is just about the average in Russia over the past couple of decades.


Sanctions can certainly cause inflation. They just cause less inflation if the government (Iraqi Kurdistan) isn't printing any more paper, or more inflation if the government (the rest of Iraq) decided to print its way out of debts.

And sanctions can certainly cause inflation if it becomes more expensive to import goods (or make them locally instead).


But what if it's the other way around? What if, because sanctions or war or whatever causes inflation, governments, in order to avoid the worse outcome of what would happen if they stop working totally, have to create more money.

Then, inflation is what creates money, not the other way around, and the narrative should be a very different one.




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