Article by Mr W A Wijewardena, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, published in Sunday Times on 10 June 2007.
A popular folk story talks of a villager making a chance meeting of a demon in the forest and using his craftiness to get the demon to work for him. Understandably, the demon being an untiring person proves to be a marvelous worker. His contribution to the villager far exceeds that of even a thousand workers. According to the story, everything is well and good as long as the villager is able to keep the demon under his control. But, on the day the villager loses his grip over the demon, it would set upon the villager and devour him. So, though the villager would have a jolly-good life in the short run, he runs the great risk of losing everything, including his life, in the long run.
Governments’ use of inflation as a tax to force-mobilize resources for funding government projects has been equated to the fate of the villager in that folk story. In the short run, a government could forget about all its fiscal problems and enjoy the temporary solace provided by it. But in the long run, when inflation becomes uncontrollable, it will have to sacrifice all its temporary gains. When an initially mild inflation degenerates into an uncontrollable hyper-inflation later, it has been termed as a mass killer. It would destroy the financial infrastructure and, through it, the entire social and economic infrastructure. Rebuilding a nation after this massive destruction would be a very painful and tedious challenge for everyone.
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