Like nearly one-third of Americans, I belong to a credit union. It’s been fifteen years since I kept my money in a for-profit bank.
For most of us, the reason is obvious: for-profit banks suck. They nickle-and-dime you to death, looking for any excuse to charge fees. But credit unions are non-profit cooperatives. So they’re not out to fuck ya. People who keep money with them are shareholders, not targets of exploitation. That’s why I keep my money in a credit union, took a home mortgage with one, and even run my credit card through one.
Fewer fees and peace of mind are nice perks, to be sure. However, there are certain disadvantages. One inconvenience is the small number of ATMs. With fewer branches and outlets, credit unions can’t offer nearly as many automated tell machines as do the big boys. So to avoid fees (from the machines, not my credit union), I had to to make withdrawals only from the relatively few credit union ATMs, none of which were near my home. Either that, or I had to suck it up and pay the piper.
Fortunately, my credit union came up with a solution. They cut a deal with 7-11.
Yes, that 7-11.
Now I can use my credit union ATM card to withdraw money at any of their stores and pay no fees.
Using the 7-11 as your primary ATM is a little different from using a bank. Instead of a quiet bank chatter, I hear about the cleanup in aisle two, and the prattling of the lottery ticket machine. And of course there’s the very strong urge to spend the freshly withdrawn bills on chocolate milk and corn nuts.
They go really well together. Trust me.
But there was also an unexpected oddity to the 7-11 ATM that threw me for a loop. If you withdraw a hundred dollars, the machine spits out five $20 bills, as is standard practice. But if you withdraw two-hundred 
The first time it happened, I thought to myself: Shit. Where am I gonna break a $100 bill?
In my mind, a crisp hundred dollar bill . . . well, actually the ones from 7-11 usually aren’t that crisp. Really, they’re mostly kinda wormy. But either way, a greenback with Benny Frank’s portrait on the front has always been a magical pain in the ass. It’s a rarity; it’s the crown prince of currency; and it’s the bill that most places don’t want to break.
You can certainly use it easily enough to buy a big ticket item, if you happen to be paying cash. A new pair of shoes or a couple of bottles of decent wine. Red, of course.
Perhaps you can collect cash from your fellow diners and use that big note to pay a restaurant tab. But generally speaking, most retail outlets don’t want to break a hundred dollar bill, right?
Well, as I’ve begun to learn, by expressing that fear I was really just dating myself. Sure, back in the 20th century many retail outlets looked at a $100 bill as a pain in the ass. Some of them even worried that the observable transaction made them vulnerable to holdups. But nowadays? Nobody seems to give a shit.
Maybe it’s that I’m getting old, but no one really looks twice anymore when I offer up a Benjamin to pay for a sandwich or a slice of pizza. Ninety-plus in change? No problem. I’ve stopped shyly explaining that I don’t have anything smaller. I no longer bother asking, Can you break this?
Just the other day, I used one to pay for an eggplant parmesan at a local pizzeria. The cashier didn’t even blink. When I tried to make small talk about “the old days” when few places wanted to take them, the woman 
behind the counter, who was about my age, just smiled half-heartedly and looked away, as if trying not to insult me while thinking to herself: Where the hell have you been?
But this isn’t just about me yelling at kids to get off my lawn and to turn down that god damned, good-for-nothing rock n roll music. I may be out of step, but of course the real culprit here isn’t my outmoded sensibilities. It’s inflation.
Inflation is that cackling maniac, who along with the dour and grim-eyed recession, form a janus-faced villain, the arch-enemy of healthy economies.
As the frenetic high to a recession’s depressing low, inflation draws a complicated set of reactions from people. A recession? Or, god forbid, a full on depression? There’s nothing happy about that. Nothing sexy. But there’s also not a lot of irrational fear about the prospect of one. Everyone knows recessions are bad, and let’s just hope one doesn’t come along.
But cultural attitudes about inflation are different. They swing like a pendulum. Inflation is at once the seductress and the bogeyman.
How could inflation actually be appealing? It’s our lust for stimulation. And inflation is, after all, just an over stimulated economy.
Much like an actual manic episode from which an individual might suffer, inflationary cycles can start off well. Just as the early phase of someone’s manic episode might begin with that person being happy, productive and even euphoric, an inflationary cycle might begin with lots of profitable economic activity. It’s attractive, it’s fun, and it’s potentially seductive.
But it’s a fine line between being energetic and taking off on a wild ride.
The recent worldwide real estate bubble was one helluva ride before the wheels fell off the wagon. Likewise, the tech stock bubble before that was a raucous party until all the beer and chips were gone.
In the early stages of inflation, people can be downright giddy. Yes, prices are rising, but the increased economic activity often feels good. There’s more money in circulation, it’s being spent more freely, and at first its easy to mistake that for increased wealth, overlooking the currency’s decreasing value.
But it seems for every sucker there’s also a worrywart. Some recite stories about the barrels-full of German deutche marks needed to buy a loaf of bread during Germany’s post-WWI hyperinflation, and how this more than anything supposedly explains the rise of Adolf Hitler. For people of this mindset, inflation is like the femme fatale from an old Film Noir. Her siren call must be resisted at all costs, lest you catch a gut shot as all your dreams turn out to be worthless paper.
But if the attractive qualities of inflation can be misleading, so too can the fears. In some ways, being a pigeon for inflation is no better than knee jerk opposition. Sometimes irrational fears of inflation can be as problematic as the irrational lust for economic growth that promotes inflation and even speculative bubbles. Both attitudes can cloud our understanding of economic cycles and can hobble our efforts to manage them.
For example, while Germany did in fact experience hyperinflation in the aftermath of World War I, the wheelbarrow phase was actually quite brief. By 1924, the German economy was on the rebound. In fact, the early 1920s hyperinflation had far less to do with Hitler’s rise than did the post-1929 economic depression.
It’s not that Germany didn’t experience hyperinflation after WWI. It did. And it’s not that hyperinflation wasn’t a tremendous economic burden. It was. It’s that the pop-culture interpretation of post-WWI Germany overemphasizes the impact of that inflation while simultaneously downplaying the utter catastrophe of deflation.
Those who are seduced by inflation, which can be anyone really, can help drive an economy towards the brink. However, those who fear inflation under any circumstances can help keep a sickly, deflated economy from getting healthier.
Confusion about inflation is is made worse by the fact that it can be a little slippery and difficult to nail down. Everyone knows what unemployment (deflation) looks like. But rising prices? Which ones and how much? Either you have a job or you don’t, but how much is too much for a quart of milk?
Even economists can’t agree. That’s why they define many different types of inflation and ways to measure them. For example, the tech and real estate bubbles mentioned earlier aren’t considered regular old inflation. Rather, they’re categorized as Asset Price Inflations.
The form of inflation that worries most people, and which affects a broad range of consumer goods and services, also lacks uniformity. Determining the best way to measure it is, to some to degree, up for grabs, which explains why the United States uses the Consumer Price Index while Great Britain uses the Retail Price Index.
Another obfuscating factor is that most inflation doesn’t come in the form of an instant shock. Usually it’s more modest forms of economic growth that are difficult to personally keep tabs on over the years. My own minor crisis with hundred dollar bills illustrates this. And as with most things with life, pizza is the connective tissue.
I remember walking down the street with my father in 1980, as we bemoaned the price of a slice, which had recently crested the 50 cent plateau. As we walked, my father reminisced about having first come to New York in 1959, when a slice and a soda was something like 15 cents. Now the cost of that same combo was nearing a dollar. I turned to him and joked:
One day, just a slice itself will be a dollar.
We laughed. What a ludicrous thought.
Nowadays a slice is nearly three bucks. And I can pay for it with one of my 7-11 issued $100 bills.
But since our current economy remains deflated, I won’t worry too much about a little inflation. I’ll stop fretting about the chance to pay for a slice with a hundred dollar bill so long as my change is mighty substantial. And maybe one day they’ll even bring the $500 bill back into circulation.
It might be all about the Benjamins for now, but perhaps one day, it’ll be all about the McKinleys.
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A longer version of this article originally appeared at 3 Quarks Daily