I've seen some talk of negative interest rates, etc. On this forum. Leroy has mentioned money with an expiration date before. But if you SET an expiration date, you are essentially declaring a future deflation date, why may be too soon or too late.

There's a more elegant solution: we can call them "inflater notes".

The basic flow is this:

1. The goverment prints the notes.

2. The goverment distributes the notes, via the IRS or some other rapid distribution method, to the people.

3. The people exchange the notes at banks of their choice for cash.

4. the banks hold the notes and treat them as "uncirculateable" reserves.(trades can be made from bank to bank, loans can be made, etc. The banks just can't turn around and hand the notes to some joe off the street)

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Then, over time:

5. governement raises taxes, or simply gets revenue boost via growth

6. government buys back the inflater notes and destroys them(deflationary)

Obviously, there are still details to flesh out, and safeguards to implement. But you guys are smart and can probably fill in those blanks. #4 is particularly un-fleshed, and may require special tweaks to banking laws to make work.

The elegance of the idea, I think, is this: the post inflationary deflation is GENTLE, and occurs when demonstrably needed most.

Then again... there may be some fatal flaw in such a plan. I'm not sure what, but there is no free lunch.