You've heard how bad things were in the Weimar Republic, when people would rush straight to stores to buy food after receiving a pay check because their money would buy much less the next day.
But it turns out that Germany's hyperinflation in 1923 was nothing compared to that experienced by Hungary, Zimbabwe and Yugoslavia.
In a new paper published by the Cato Institute, economics professor Steve Hanke lists the all-time worst episodes of hyperinflation:
(click for full image).
Note that Hungary's daily inflation rate was ten times greater than that in Weimar Germany, and prices doubled almost six times faster in Hungary than in the Weimar Republic.
Life in Weimar Germany was extremely difficult. But Hungary in 1946 was a lot worse.
Note: While the commonly accepted explanation for hyperinflation is government printing too much money, Ellen Brown argues that the real explanation is a concerted attack on a country's currency by foreign speculators and/or foreign governments.
Thank you for this, G. Ellen's explanation of the history is correct that short-selling currency, one form of derivative speculation in our casino capitalism, is economic warfare. Our political leadership allows it, and is therefore complicit in this viciously antagonistic destruction. This is the truth of our economy and government in early 21st century Earth. The silver lining in Weimar Germany was after the collapse, Germany enacted a partial monetary reform by initiating massive public works using unemployed labor and paying with government-created fiat currency. As we know, as Napoleon accomplished earlier after ten years of violent revolution, their economy rebounded as the world's strongest nearly instantly.
ReplyDeleteThis can be our near future, if we demand monetary reform. Ellen's other articles explain monetary reform at a state and national level, www.monetary.org has great info, and you're welcome to my brief by looking up The Heart of Economics: the creation and management of money.
Ellen Brown is nutters. She is nothing but a monetary crank. If you want to understand economics, read Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Henry Hazlitt.
ReplyDeleteEllen Brown may be something of a socialist, but, Mark, she may have more than a trace of political realism in her.
ReplyDeleteIf one looks at the biographies of people who were children in the twilight of the classical gold standard, there is a consistent pattern of radical fathers and ultraconservative mothers. This, given that women worked very little at the time, suggests clearly that the working classes of Europe really were highly socialistic and atheistic and that sooner or later they would have campaigned for radical welfare states by force.
Those political scientists who have looked at hyperinflation believe very strongly that it is related to internal problems whereby a government cannot gain the support of its citizens. (It is noteworthy that some such scenarios, like the Spanish Civil War, have not resulted in hyperinflation despite the perfect political conditions).
Those cases that do not seem related to violent working class unrest (Hungary in 1946, Yugoslavia) are related either to the efforts of Stalin’s puppets to destroy the wealth of Hungary’s middle and ruling classes, or to the placing of a currency that had been overprinted onto a free market (all post-Communist hyperinflations).