First of all, only currency issuers, that is, central banks, can benefit from inflation. Private banks can't benefit from inflation. Although losses can be avoided by professionals, inflation itself has a negative impact on private banks.
Secondly, inflation is harmful, but its main harm is not the so-called exploitation of working people, but the instability of price signals, which leads to the inefficiency of the economic system. Inflation has two main effects. One is the distance effect (or time lag effect), which means that when an institution with the right to issue money implements the inflation policy, the extra money it prints does not depreciate for itself, because only he knows that it has printed more money, and everything is normal until he spends it. Only after he spent the extra money did the inflation effect begin to appear and spread outward slowly around it. The second is the so-called two-way effect. Many people say that inflation makes money worthless and makes them poor. This sentence is mostly wrong, because after inflation makes money worthless, not only your money is worthless, but also your company's money is worthless. If you work for a company, in the case of inflation, companies also need to spend more money to buy your labor. In other words, your salary is higher. So you have nothing to lose in this process (the above analysis is very in line with the actual situation in western countries. They have trade unions representing workers' interests, which can ensure that workers' wages will be raised in the face of inflation, but it is quite different in China. Because our labor force is too large, on the other hand, our trade union can't speak for the workers well, so our workers' wages depend largely on the employer's unilateral will anyway. In this case, inflation has really become a tool to exploit people.
As for deflation, the same analysis is made. From inflation to deflation, people cannot be exploited. Slight inflation can also lubricate the economy and promote economic development. Serious inflation is harmful, the most important harm is to destroy the price mechanism and lead to the inefficiency of the economic system.
Finally, it is better not to believe those novel economics books, such as Currency Wars, which are mostly nonsense. If you want to know what economics is all about, you'd better read formal books.
Typing is very tiring!
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According to your supplement, I would like to say a few words about the capital of the central bank. The central bank is different from ordinary enterprises, and its capital function is also different from ordinary enterprises. People who own the capital of the central bank do not necessarily have the control of the central bank. In the currency war, many conclusions are drawn from the proposition that the Federal Reserve is privately owned. People think that the privatization of the Federal Reserve can turn it into its own printing machine. Although it is true that the Fed is privately owned, the conclusion drawn from it is seriously wrong.
According to the capital composition, the central banks of major countries in the world today can be divided into five types: central banks with all capital owned by the state, central banks with mixed shares held by the state and the private sector, central banks with all capital not owned by the state, central banks without capital and central banks with capital owned by many countries. Obviously, the central bank in the United States belongs to the category that all capital is not owned by the state, but this kind of central bank is not unique. Central banks in Italy, Switzerland and other countries have also been privatized. In addition, the central banks of Japan, Mexico, Venezuela and other countries are all mixed central banks with partial shares owned by the state and the private sector. But what is important is that the capital attribute of the central bank is not important, whether it is private or public. The central bank is not so much an enterprise as a national institution. Every country has a special "Central Bank Law" to strictly regulate its functions. It is impossible for it to print and issue banknotes at will. In addition, take the Federal Reserve as an example. Regardless of the annual income of the Federal Reserve, 12 member banks (Citigroup, Chase, Hanover Manufacturing, etc. ) with its capital, it can only get a fixed dividend income of 6%. Other countries, such as Japan and Mexico, which have private elements in the capital attributes of central banks, have this provision. So the private shareholders of the central bank can't get much benefit from it. Central banks are different from commercial banks. It is precisely because the capital attribute is not so important to the central bank that there is a central bank without capital like the Bank of Korea.
Don't look at the world with conspiracy theories. Although Goldman Sachs, Morgan and other Wall Street investment banks do have the ability to kill a country, it is not the same as conspiracy. They rely on the ability to mobilize huge amounts of money and 100 years of accumulated operating experience. Britain is also an old capitalist country, but the pound was still hit in the 1990s, which shows the problem. This is a modern tragedy that you can see but can't do anything about, the so-called financial war.