December 30, 2017 Saturday
Bedtime Story
The Story of Two
France under the leadership of this
five-member Directory was perpetually at war with various neighbors at
different times that included Britain, Austria, Prussia, the Kingdom of Naples,
Russia and even the Ottoman Empire.
These wars led the French economy to spiral
out of control and eventually it ended up being in a free fall.
The government was bankrupt and the fiat money,
the Assignat, was getting devalued almost every day leading to hyperinflation.
I have had a very personal experience with
this kind of hyperinflation in the Russia of 1991 but more dramatically in the
sordid year of 1992.
I had landed in Soviet Union in the autumn
of 1991 along with mon ami when its dying throes were palpable even to very
young unexperienced men like us whose only goal was to get their education and
scamper back to the safety of their homeland.
Of course, little did the naive brains realize
that time that there is no such thing as safety anywhere once you come into
existence on this fragile planet.
A major coup d’état also famously known as
the August Putsch had recently been attempted by the members of the Soviet
Union’s government against the Soviet President and General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev.
The coup as we all know collapsed in just
eight days and perestroika and glasnost it seemed to have won the day.
(History would later go on to show that
nothing was won and all was lost and Gorbachev who became the darling of the
West came to be reviled and denounced at home.)
But already by then the mighty empire was edging
and tipping towards an appalling economic and political crisis.
Food and medicine were becoming scarce all
over with Russians standing in long queues for such an essential stuff as bread
and milk.
Strangely enough, for a young man from perhaps
the most chaotic third world country, I (and perhaps even mon ami too) saw this
as a sign of stoic and disciplined Russian way of life.
But the worst was yet to come.
Unknown to me, in February of 1992 the
Central Bank of Russia headed by Viktor Gerashchenko let loose on the control
of money being printed out.
In the second quarter of 1992 money supply
had increased by 34%.
In the third quarter, it further increased
by another 30%.
By the end of 1992 money supply in the
Russian market had increased a shocking eighteen fold!
If that was not crazy enough, what made the
hyperinflation a complete certainty was the complete deregulation of most of
the prices.
The 69 years of state control over
virtually all means of production, investment, consumption and prices was one
fine day suddenly let go both free and berserk.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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