Banking analogy of Linux memory management

Banking analogy of Linux memory management

Posted Feb 6, 2010 15:13 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Banking analogy of Linux memory management by bronson
Parent article: Quotes of the week

This is safe but glacially slow

Ask the Spanish about that sometime.

What it really means is that your money supply is out of the hands of politicians. That's a good thing, in a sense, but the downside is that if someone makes a big gold discovery (e.g. Spain) you suffer massive inflation; if your economy needs to grow, it can't; and if your economy suddenly *shrinks* the gold standard will throttle it and stop it recovering. The Great Depression is of course the canonical example of this.

The gold standard works great when things are going well, but if there's a sudden shock it's a disaster, and it can be the source of sudden shocks. In this it is very similar to every other scheme for backing money yet discovered.

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