Originally Posted by TheDoc

I think the inflation we have today is part of the banking structure that allowed debts back before 1800 - which was the first real inflationary period.

Hyper inflation, I think started shortly after the 1900's... by time the great deflation/depression ended they had everything in place to fully create & control the speed of inflation. We had a couple major hyper inflation jumps 10-20 years later, but that was followed by a long span of very slow inflation. Once 1973 happened, inflation started to compound and as it grows, it compounds even more, exactly like interest does.. making steady-compounding hyper inflation a normal for almost 40 years now.

Even if it goes down slightly one year, it's still up over the previous years, it has gone up every decade, like clockwork for a 100 years. Today it takes about 10-12 years and inflation doubles itself, which started just after 1973.