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| When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-Inflation |  | Author: Adam Fergusson
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: £12.99
Buy New: £7.52
as of 5/9/2010 14:09 CDT details
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New (12) Used (3) from £5.99
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 628
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 1906964440
EAN: 9781906964443
ASIN: 1906964440
Publication Date: July 6, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 The welcome return of a dark classic July 13, 2010
Mr. T. PRICE (London, UK)
53 out of 53 found this review helpful
Reading, and digesting, `When Money Dies' is not particularly easy. In financial terms it is the equivalent of a snuff movie. For the sensitive of spirit, the experience is truly heart-rending. For this is not a fictional phantasmagoria; the extraordinary sequence of events within it genuinely happened, to real people.
As those schoolchildren who are still taught anything are told, the seeds of the Weimar hyper-inflation, like those of the Second World War, were sown in the ashes of the First World War, and most pressingly by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The Allies, and most notably the French, were determined to bleed Germany dry. Be careful what you wish for..
Germany could never hope to make good on the burden of Allied reparations forced on her. But few, Keynes perhaps apart, could have foreseen the extraordinary sequence of events that were to culminate in the economic firestorm of Weimar 1923, when sovereign allegiance to the printing press caused an entire currency and national economy to implode upon themselves. A few examples from Adam Fergusson may convey in some small way the surreal horror of what came to befall the largely unwitting populace, and political base, of Germany:
"In October 1923 it was noted in the British Embassy in Berlin that the number of marks to the pound equalled the number of yards to the sun. Dr Schacht, Germany's National Currency Commissioner, explained that at the end of the Great War one could in theory have bought 500,000,000,000 eggs for the same price as that for which, five years later, only a single egg was procurable. When stability returned, the sum of paper marks needed to buy a gold mark was precisely equal to the quantity of square millimetres in a square kilometre. It is far from certain that such calculations helped anyone to understand what was going on.."
A young Ernest Hemingway happened to be travelling, with his wife, through history in the making. [The following is the anecdote of the many from Adam Fergusson's book that, perhaps perversely, I find most moving of all.] Working for the Toronto Daily Star, Hemingway crossed the frontier from France during the monetary horror and had the following experience:
"There were no marks to be had in Strasbourg, the mounting exchange had cleared the bankers out days ago, so we changed some French money in the railway station at Kehl. For 10 francs I received 670 marks. Ten francs amounted to about 90 cents in Canadian money. That 90 cents lasted Mrs Hemingway and me for a day of heavy spending and at the end of the day we had 120 marks left !
"Our first purchase was from a fruit stand.. We picked out five very good looking apples and gave the old woman a 50-mark note. She gave us back 38 marks in change. A very nice looking, white bearded old gentleman saw us buy the apples and raised his hat.
`Pardon me, sir,' he said, rather timidly, in German, `how much were the apples ?'
"I counted the change and told him 12 marks.
"He smiled and shook his head. `I can't pay it. It is too much.'
"He went up the street walking very much as white bearded old gentlemen of the old regime walk in all countries, but he had looked very longingly at the apples. I wish I had offered him some. Twelve marks, on that day, amounted to a little under 2 cents. The old man, whose life savings were probably, as most of the non-profiteer classes are, invested in German pre-war and war bonds, could not afford a 12 mark expenditure. He is the type of the people whose incomes do not increase with the falling purchasing value of the mark.."
This anecdote perhaps best summarises the crushing and unpitying aspect of hyper-inflation. Those citizens who had been among the most virtuous, who had saved and patriotically supported their country by buying its debts, were wiped out in the financial holocaust.
The Weimar experience is cautionary, and perhaps, as Adam Fergusson suggests, its protagonists genuinely did not understand the hyper-inflationary mechanisms - money-printing without limit - by which they forcibly impoverished a country and above all its middle class (then, as now, economics was not a science - if science at all - well understood). But that excuse will not serve for those administrations determinedly taking us down what looks optically like a very similar path. Deficit financing; quantitative easing; monetary stimulus - these are all Orwellian weasel coinages that barely disguise the reality at the heart of current administrative desperation in the face of a colossal financial crisis: the somewhat forlorn hope that ongoing money printing will mysteriously solve, other than to extinguish the real value of, a super-abundance of both corporate, individual, and sovereign debt.
But that would be getting ahead of ourselves. The immediate threat is not inflationary, but deflationary: broad money growth - at the time of writing - is contracting across the developed world, and bringing the prospect of recession if not depression in its wake. Yet this does not absolve western central banks and politicians from the required responsibility to save their currencies and economies from both their own malign influence and from that of the bankers, who have displayed much of the same self-serving behaviour as German industrialists did during the Weimar experience. Adam Fergusson's book serves as the ultimate warning against the debauchery of currency in the name of shorter term political expediency. The question is, are the politicians and central bankers of today ready, willing or able to learn anything from such a monstrous historical example ?
The causes and consequences of Weimar hyperinflation. July 8, 2010
Morten Pedersen (Guildford, UK)
45 out of 46 found this review helpful
A lot of misinformation with regards to this topic is spread, which this books clears up. First off, hyperinflation was set in motion as a direct result of failing to balance the books; running unsustainable deficits. With limited access to debt markets in the wake of WW1, the easy way out was to simply print money. And once in motion, refusing to raise interest rates, which would have increased savings, the population soon lost all faith in the currency.
The ultimate solution - introduce a new commodity-backed currency; the Rentenmark, and balance the books.
It is interesting to note the three reasons why it kept going for as long as it did - one, the authorities knew that balancing the books would lead to an increase in unemployment, two, printing was politically the easy solution, and three, (much like in Argentina in 1989) the authorities in large had an interest in keeping the inflationary scheme going.
It is also almost saddening that almost as soon as the hyperinflation chapter had passed, both the public and private sector indebted themselves up to their eyeballs, the precursor to the Great Depression.
The primary focus of the book is Germany, but both Austria and Hungary are included. Definitely recommended.
Scary, and deeply depressing. But a must read. July 28, 2010
Jan V. H. Luthman
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
The parallels with today are clear for all to see - just substitute `credit crunch' for WW1, and `bankers' for `Jews'.
Then, as now, the colossal costs of disaster were met, not by higher taxation (or reduced government spending), but by printing money. Then, as now, it was politically expedient to conjure up a populist hate target, rather than deal with the real causes. Then, as now, the political imperative was full employment, regardless of its economic merit. Then, as now, there was a refusal to acknowledge that printing money, or debasing the currency, was the cause of the Mark's decline (consider, for example, the nonsense being put about that UK taxpayers have benefitted because the Bank of England has made a "profit" on the gilts that it purchased with £200bn of imaginary money. The reality is that, in just twenty four brief months, it has lost the nation 25% of its entire wealth, accumulated over centuries. But, as in the Weimar Republic, nobody sees that - they see only how expensive things have become overseas).
This is not what might be termed a `popular' novel. Indeed, it says much for Mr Fergusson's dour Scottish academic thoroughness that he should have been able to make a book about truly momentous events - social collapse, mass destitution, breakdown of law and order, widespread political assassination - such relentlesly hard work to read.
Nevertheless, despite its heavy-going style, the book is a must-read for anyone wishing to gain insight into a financial and social cataclysm that really did occur in modern times, and an understanding of the appalling risks inherent within present political and monetary policies. It is both scary and deeply depressing.
"Zeros in -- Zeros out. Naught is Naught." or "Making the Same Old Mistakes, but not Makin' Mo' Money" May 29, 2006
Jamal J. Hattab (TX)
28 out of 32 found this review helpful
I first read this book some 25 years ago. I was so impressed I immediately bought a dozen copies & gave them to pals. (In 1980 they were 3-4 pounds sterling each--it's ironic & interesting that the price of this out-of-print book now fetches multiple zeros).
Here are some parallels with our time:
The Germany of the '20s finds it cannot meet the costs of war reparations. The US of the 2000s starts a war intending to pay reparations before it begins, and then finds itself unable to meet the mounting the costs of war reparations it originally thought would leap out of the ground and just pay themselves. (Meanwhile, the US's wounded soldiers [& the families of its dead soldiers] are going to require entire lifetimes of domestic reparations).
The Germany of the '20s attempted to buy/finance prosperity with ballooning deficits. The US of the 2000s wants to buy/ finance prosperity with ballooning deficits. Neither nation-State can be told it is wrong--and neither admits (or even recognizes) inflation is a hidden and pernicious tax.
Germany before the '20s had every confidence in the mark. The US in the 2000s believes the only currency in the world is the dollar, & the only thing money can be made of is paper and ink (never gold or silver). But as one mixes ink with paper, hoping the mixture will have exchange value, one finds that one has given value to neither material.
As Germany becomes more unhinged in the '20s, it moves towards a strong man as a moth to a flame. As the US grows more unhinged, it loses faith in its 'strong man' (even if he does not lose faith in himself). If the US should subsequently shun whoever wants to be the next 'strong man', there may yet be be hope. Since it is possible for the next wannabe 'strong man' to be laughed off the stage, it is yet possible the US will not succumb. The jury is still out.
At times the mark strenghthens (goes against the ultimate trend, for short periods): the Germans of the '20s (and other investors) think the crisis is over and it is time to buy. At times the dollar strengthens (goes against the ultmate trend [?], for short periods): the world of the 2000s thinks the crisis may end--isn't it now time to buy cheap US assets?
The Germans of the '20s can add more zeros to their paper--but paper producition does not keep up with the 'demand' for money. The US of the 2000s has but to generate a computer entry and like magic, the 'demand' for money is met. The paper of Germany leaves a trail [Fergusson proves this]--computer entries can be a hidden and dirty little State Secret [until prices rise as the money actually depreciates, the state can suppress much of the evidence].
At many levels, this book about a frightening past speaks to a menacing present. Because of its price, many will not get to read that message. Between the Germany of the '20s and the US of the 2000s, there are differences too, but not differences that necessarily help. The potential for money supply to soar (the Fed's ability to create credit by computer without even having to buy ink, paper, and printers) has never been so boundless. We of the 2000s prefer to believe we are more intellegent than the Germans of the 20s. We live with the hope that our enlightened leaders comprehend inflation & understand that deficit spending shall ruin us. Enlighted people that they are, from government top to government bottom, we know and rely upon our leaders' fiscal responsibility. Just look at how enlightenment runs through the Nation--budgetary constraints are placed upon our brilliant leader, by those guardians of the Public Purse & Trust, a US legislature that checks and balances all his raw power. If you buy into the spin, they all do their utmost to preserve & protect the currency, while shouldering their duties to preserve and protect our Constitution. Tonight, I sleep contentedly, knowing both these National Treasures are safe and sound.
Read this book: it is still found in libraries. You will be witness to ink on paper that actually has and holds its value.
A Book without peer July 25, 2010
Anna Hummer (Illinois)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book is a MUST read for the historian or anyone who tries to understand pre WWII Europe. What I found incredible was that Earnest Hemmingway, the famous American author - then correspondent for a Toronto newspaper, could not cash a U.S. Five dollar bill in Berlin. A U. S. One dollar bill was just about the largest denomination bill that could be converted.
Think about that......
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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