Inflation isn't new.

This man-made disaster has bedeviled civilizations at least since ancient Rome.

In order to pay for his extravagant expenses, the first-century Roman Emperor Nero to base

the Roman currency, the Daenerys.

How did he do it?

By replacing silver, which was valuable, with copper, which was not.

That was just the beginning.

Rome's corrupt governments to base the coinage on a regular basis.

By the fourth century, the price of wheat was two million times higher than it had been

in the mid-second century.

By the fifth century, Rome was finished, overrun up by barbarians but by inflation.

In the sixteenth century, English King Henry VIII did essentially the same thing with England's

coinage to pay for his wars, divorces, and debaucheries.

And what became known as the Great Debacement, food prices soared.

Ultimately, Henry left it to his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, to clean things up by issuing

new high-quality coinage, setting the stage for the emergence of England as a great power.

The continental congress of the American Revolution tried to print its way out of its money problems

by paying soldiers with paper money.

The first US currency, the continental dollar, was so overprinted that it became confetti,

collapsing into hyperinflationary oblivion.

Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, saved the day by linking the US dollar to gold.

Figures like Elizabeth I and Alexander Hamilton are rare.

...