History Doesn’t Repeat, but it Does Rhyme.

So, listening to The History of Rome podcast, the speaker has mentioned several interesting parallels to current events.

Such as when one of the early Emperors needed money, so he instituted something called “prescription”, where wealthy Romans were forced to Will all of their property and wealth to the government, and then commit suicide.

Ok, ok, that’s not the parallel.  But, aside from the natural horror of this, the sudden glut of real estate put up for sale made prices fall.  There was suddenly too much supply, and everyone was poorer because of it.  So much less money was gained from this initial endeavor.

Now, I recently heard this gem

“Emperors in the past had simply borrowed what they needed without regard for how they were going to pay it back.  Besides, if the creditors did come calling, an Emperor could simply devalue the coins he minted, until he had enough nominal chunks of worthless metal to pay the specific amounts that everyone demanded.”

I’ve heard about how the Romans had devalued their currency, but I never truly understood how it worked until I started following our own Fed policy today.  Hmmmm…

But perhaps all is not immediately lost.  This particular podcast is about Domitian, who, “had no interest in inflating his way into insolvency, though.  And, taking the opposite tack, he actually returned the silver ratio in the Denarii back to the Augustan ratio of 12%.”

“..But, of course, with less circulating currency to work with, Domitian was forced to demand more from his subjects.”

There’s more great stuff, and you can listen to that particular episode here.

Ave!