I am reading "Lords of Finance" and it alludes to how the gold trade helped trigger the Great Depression.

https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/... (hat tip to HN as this was where this book was recommended to me)

Granted we don't have an official gold standard, but could todays gold exchange cause similar problems?

https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-gold-standard-contr...

I’m not the OP, but there’s a whole book on the topic. Fascinating read if you ever get the chance.

A Keystone Cops level of professionalism displayed by the central bankers at the time.

Lords of Finance - https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/...

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/...

I agree that technology advances would have lead to massive deflation without all the money printing. The point of money printing is to do precisely this, so that the measure of economy does not get out of sync with the size of the economy. https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/... is a great book that touches the topic -- it also shows this discussion is not new.

I also agree that the chosen transmission mechanism of money creation (buying bonds and stocks by central banks) might have lead to worsening inequality. I like the Yudkowsky treatment at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tAThqgpJwSueqhvKM/frequently... .

But I still think that the inflation is low and if we want to describe the problems that are happening even though it's low, we should create new language, not shift the current one.