Thursday, January 08, 2009

That German Hyperinflation...

Mr. Fact is of course the fount of all knowledge. He contacted me after my last blog about Mugabi-isation and the German experience of the 20's.
This is what he said:The Germans are terrified of hyperinflation - they all have it drummed into them at school that if you have hyperinflation, before long some Austrian's running your country and you end up freezing to death in Stalingrad.
In 1923 the central bank was employing 132 private firms with 1723 printing machines to print cash 24 hours a day. The quote I love is that at the end of the day,when the costs were all added up it cost (in Marks) 32,776,899,763,734,490,417 AND (just to prove German bureaucracy was alive and well) 5 Pfennigs.
That's nearly 33 Million Trillion.When a wheelbarrow load of useless paper would only buy a loaf, they still managed to track that 5 Pfennigs - wonderful.
PS
Just to be clear, that's what it cost to print the money - not the value of what was printed. Think about it....

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