Contango_Cowboy

August 1914. Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George faces a brutal reality: the Great War will cost £3 million per day, but the entire government budget runs only £200 million annually. He can't possibly tax his way out of this nightmare (imagine trying to explain a 500% tax increase to voters while their sons march off to die). Instead, he cranks up the printing presses and lets the Bank of England work its magic. The pound sterling loses 75% of its purchasing power between 1914 and 1920. Your average British housewife watches bread prices triple, coal costs quadruple, and her husband's wages buy half what they used to. Lloyd George stole her savings to pay for artillery shells through monetary expansion. Every government pulls this same sleight of hand because war taxes are political suicide, but inflation taxes hit two years later when everyone's forgotten the connection. Fast forward to Vietnam and Nixon's identical playbook. Defense spending jumps from $50 billion to $80 billion annually while Johnson refuses to raise taxes for his precious Great Society programs. The printing presses fire up again, the dollar crashes against gold, and by 1971 Nixon abandons Bretton Woods entirely rather than admit he's been funding Southeast Asian adventures with monetary heroin. American families watch their grocery bills explode while politicians blame oil companies and labor unions. Every major conflict since 1900 follows this script. Politicians promise quick victories funded by "temporary" monetary expansion, then act shocked when prices spiral out of control years later. Ukraine aid, Middle East interventions, the next inevitable crisis - they'll finance it all the same way while your purchasing power bleeds out slowly enough that you won't riot in the streets.