Jim Grant on inflation and war

If there's one sure, history-validated cause of inflation, it's war.  It's the activity, which, if carried on at scale, activates the money-printing presses, propels government spending and up-ends public expectations, all to the end of destroying life, property and, not infrequently, currencies.  Abstracting from a particular casus belli, war is malinvestment on a GDP-level scale, an economic calamity for the loser and no certain boon for the winner.  Yet war is what humanity wages.  We the people (through the agency of our tribes and governments) have fought since time immemorial, and the United Nations won't stop us now.

~ Jim Grant, "Where inflation comes from," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, September 27, 2024