num_pages: 288
description:  When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923 with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4200000000000 marks) the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars artworks and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. Germanys finances descended into chaos with severe social unrest in its wake. Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. However quantitative easing that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. Whatever the reason for a countrys deficit necessity or profligacy unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditure it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. What if it does not? Germany in 1923 provides a vivid compelling sobering moral tale.
language: English
title: When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-inflation
publisher: None