Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Threat Of Hyper Inflation Guardian

Juan Cole 03/14/2004

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Threat of Hyper-Inflation

The Guardian reports that the British head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Basra, Patrick Nixon, is warning about the dangers of inflation. The economy is heating up. Rents and housing costs in Basra are way up. Unemployment in Basra has fallen to 15%, in Baghdad to 30%, and in the country as a whole to 33%, according to this article. The prospect of the CPA injecting $18 billion into the still weak Iraqi economy all of a sudden could spark an inflationary spiral. Inflation is defined as too much money chasing too few goods.

Hyper-inflation could be extremely destabilizing for Iraq. It will hurt those on fixed incomes and the ghetto poor, who are already politically radical. Some groups, in contrast, will become extremely wealthy. This phenomenon occurred in Iran in the 1970s because of the oil boom, and contributed to the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....