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    When Money Dies: the nightmare of the Weimar hyper-inflation
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    When Money Dies: the nightmare of the Weimar hyper-inflation
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    When Money Dies: the nightmare of the Weimar hyper-inflation
    Ebook330 pages114 hours

    When Money Dies: the nightmare of the Weimar hyper-inflation

    By Adam Fergusson

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In 1923, German currency became effectively worthless: the exchange rate in December of that year was one US dollar to 4200 trillion marks. The Weimar Republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread. In desperation, the Bavarian prime minister submitted a bill to the Reichsrat proposing that gluttony be made a penal offence — his exact definition of a glutton being ‘one who habitually devotes himself to the pleasures of the table to such a degree that he might arouse discontent in view of the distressful condition of the population’.

    Since its first publication in 1975, When Money Dies has become the classic history of these bizarre and frightening times. Weaving elegant analysis with a wealth of eyewitness accounts by ordinary people struggling to survive, it deals above all with the human side of inflation: why governments resort to it; the dismal, corruptive pestilence it visits on their citizens; the agonies of recovery; and the dark, long-term legacy. And at a time of acute economic strain, it provides an urgent warning against the addictive dangers of printing money — shorthand for deficit financing — as a soft option for governments faced with growing unrest and unemployment.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribe Publications
    Release dateOct 3, 2011
    ISBN9781921942228
    Unavailable
    When Money Dies: the nightmare of the Weimar hyper-inflation

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    Reviews for When Money Dies

    4/5

    46 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This book got some stunning reviews on Amazon, but i found it to be tough sledding. Interesting topic and timely, but then book is hard to follow in places.
    • 5/5
      Interesting survey of the post-WWI hyperinflation in Germany and to a lesser extent, the inflation in Austria and Hungary.

      Until I was halfway through, I didn't know about the recent resurgence of interest in the book. (I discovered it through a reference elsewhere.) Despite the publisher's blurb about "quantitative easing" on the back of the book, and the author's Conservative credentials, I think anyone reading this as a cautionary tale about modern monetary policy may leave disappointed. As it was published in Britain in 1975, it may well be viewed as a warning about the inflation then taking place.

      Read it for what it is--a sobering story of what happens not just to a country and industry but to ordinary people when currency ceases to have value and citizens no longer have faith that it will be worth anything.
    • 5/5
      Adam Fergusson is a good writer. There are so many well turned phrases in this book describing the hyperinflation in Germany that paved the way for Hitler. I'm not sure what I really learned, other than maybe to grow a garden, buy some land, raise some cattle, have some gold or silver and maintain my moral sensibilities. To borrow one of Fergusson's phrases, other than a few snippets of wisdom I'm left "to wander in the quagmires of irrelevant historical analogy". Here is his summary, "What really broke Germany was the constant taking of the soft political option in respect of money." Here are some of his best phrases:"Life ground on in a pother of financial worries for all classes.""No situation, however, was so bad that summer that Dr. .... could not make it worse.""It is indisputable that in those inflationary years Hitler felt his political strength as a national figure and first tried his fingers for size on the throat of German democracy.""The longer the delay the more savage the cure."