"Tangible asset owners that bought the asset on borrowed money (like mortgage holders) benefit, but only until they have to sell the asset for dollars that are worth a lot less."

yeah, the inflated dollars are worth a lot less, but you get a lot more of them. the point is that presumably, the tangible asset has a value expressible in some amount of the inflated dollars, and it all depends on how much stuff you can then purchase with those dollars. for example, i buy a car on credit for $10,000. runaway inflation hits right after i sign the deal, and five years later i pay off my loan having spent, (with interest), $12,000 for the car. i then turn around and sell my five year old junker for $15,000. granted, the fifteen grand won't buy the same merchandise fifteen grand would have bought five years earlier due to inflation, but i still made a profit of $3,000, and got use of a car for 5 years. Since businesses have a very small percentage of their assets as cash, but instead have it as physical plant, machinery, buildings, property, stock--all items that increase in price (not necessarily value) with inflation, they are to a certain extent protected from inflation. and of course, money they borrow they will get to pay back in cheap dollars, even when you figure in the interest. so business prefers inflation to deflation.

in other words, like the article states, inflation makes people spend money they might otherwise save in order to get some value out of it before it erodes away. true, governments print worthless money, but so do banks. except when banks and businesses do it is called "free enterprise", and when governments do it is called "deficit spending". when financial houses sell and rent out (and short-sell), money, commercial paper,"financial instruments", iou's and other worthless intangibles it is is called "finance capitalism", capitalism in its most evolved and decadent state.

as i've demonstrated before (with geometric logic!) credit is a way of bootstrapping, to finance tomorrow's wealth with tomorrow's profits, and it can be a good thing, if handled wisely. but when financial manipulation becomes an end in itself, as it tends to do in republican administrations, it sucks capital away from real investment in goods and services
and, manipulated by a parasitic class of finance capitalists, creates bubbles which eventually burst, dragging the rest of the entrepreneurial community down with it. this is the most degenerate, and unfortunately, inevitable, form of capitalism, indistinguishable from a ponzi scheme. so inevitable, in fact, it would happen even if there were no government whatsoever.