BizAims

Chrysler LLC, for years the country's third-biggest automaker, faces a clouded future. In August, 2007, Cerberus Capital Management took control of the American car company from DaimlerChrysler, ending a nine-year trans-Atlantic merger. Chrysler became the first American automobile company to be privately held in a half century.

The merger had been meant to bring two of the oldest names in the automotive business together as equals, and to create a global powerhouse. But the 1998 arrangement did not turn out that way.

For one thing, it quickly became apparent that the merger of equals was really a German takeover of the longtime number three American carmaker. For another, the savings and increased marketing power both sides envisioned never really materialized.

Inflation is the loss in purchasing power of a currency unit such as the dollar, usually expressed as a general rise in the prices of goods and services. A classic example is the Great Inflation of the Roman Empire. Successive emperors replaced a steadily increasing fraction of the silver in their ancient currency, the denarius, with base metals like bronze or copper. As a result prices rose inexorably despite repeated attempts to restrain them through legislation. Diocletian, rather than taking responsibility for the debasement, attributed the rapid inflation of his day to the avarice of his subjects. His famous edict of a.d. 301 threatened with death any vendor who charged prices exceeding official limits. But inflation ran along unhindered for another century until an alternative currency, an undepreciated gold coin known to Shakespeare as the bezant, became the customary unit of account, spreading throughout Europe and lasting well into the Middle Ages.

In modern times inflation continues to be blamed on private greed, and governments still seek to restrain it by decree, sometimes even devaluing their currencies as they do so.