Our money will be worth less and less and less on international markets. Our buying power will go down. We experienced this personally years ago when we moved to the UK and then naively exchanged our dollars into pounds. The pounds lost value against other currencies -- and -- Woops! We didn't lose money. Our money lots its value.
already happening. cause: print money faster than your economy grows and your money becomes worth less and less relative to other currencies and commodities. One of the reasons that things like oil and gold have been going up.
This will mean that we can't buy as much imported stuff with our money. Since we import most of our consumer goods and more of our food than we realize, prices on those things will go up. They could rise very, very quickly depending on how quickly our dollar declines in value as well as on the amount of panic that spreads.
On the other side of the coin, US exports cost less in the importing country which could (should) positively impact manufacturing in the USA.
Panic -- that happens because, even though prices are outrageously high, the stores don't sell as much and therefore don't stock as much as they once did. News gets around, and it can happen although it won't necessarily happen, that people buy everyday necessities like toilet paper off the shelves just to make sure that they won't ever run out at home.
In a steady state economy (no changes to adapt to current conditions) you are correct. As our economy adapts (and capitalism does allow for more flexibility than other economic models), the panic will recede. The thing that could get in the way is overregulation (note: I am NOT saying no regulation but like anything too much of even a good thing can be bad).
I've done a lot of reading on the legal cases in German courts during the great German inflation in the 1920s. The landlords who had entered into longterm leases suffered the most. The leases specified the amounts of rent the tenant would pay. And, as the inflation worsened, the agreed rent in many apartments did not even cover the cost of heat. The German courts had the authority to virtually rewrite or renegotiate the leases to help the landlords. I doubt that would happen here outside, perhaps, of bankruptcy court. And even in bankruptcy court, the renter would probably lose the right to live in the leased housing.
This is the reverse side of rent control.
So, after the fact that we have rampant inflation becomes obvious, creditors will demand higher interest returns for loaning money, and the Fed will raise those rates to slow the inflation.
yes, but a focus on a rebuilding a balanced economy can ameliorate much of this. If an economy has better balance, the need for imports lessens but to do so, some ideological sacrifices (by all) will have to be made. Things like: energy exploration (lessens the dependency upon oil imports); investments in renewable energy as well as others.
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