I'd like to clarify my concerns with the current version of the article, following the reversion of some of my edits by Stirling Newberry.

My general concern is that it doesn't accurately describe the debate about various causes of hyperinflation.  The article seems to me to be describing a stereotyped view of each side of the debate, which exagerrates the amount of controversy and obscures the amount of common ground.  "Monetary" and "Crisis of confidence" explanations of hyperinflation are describes as if they are two completely different competing theories,  held by different schools of thought ("monetarists" and "neo-liberals").

I think that the overwhelming majority of economists would see both monetary and confidence factors as being important as the initial 'root cause' of hyperinflation, with the importance varying from case to case.  A lot of the economics is very uncontroversial. For example:
It's totally uncontroversial that a massive increase in the money supply will cause hyperinflation.  Virtually any economist will agree that a big increase in the money supply is a possible trigger for hyperinflation, even if they don't believe it's the only one.  To say imply that neo-liberal economists don't believe that some hyperinflations are initially triggered by monetary expansion is to caricature their position.
It's totally uncontroversial that loss of confidence in the monetary system has a big role in hyperinflation.  To imply that monetarists don't see a role for reestablishing confidence in the currency - that just 'stopping the printing presses' is enough - is just misleading.  Monetarists talk about ways of establishing confidence all the time.

I would be interested to hear from Stirling what specific inaccuracies were in my edits, and why he deleted the statement "The two models are closely related, and often economists may explain hyperinflation as being due to a combination of both effects."

 20:44, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)