Here's an artifact from a sad chapter in monetary history, when the Weimar Republic tried to bridge the gap between its income and its spending by printing ever increasing amounts of currency, resulting in one of the most notorious instances of hyperinflation on record. This note, dated from February of 1923, is in the amount of 100,000 marks. At about that time, you could buy 10 loaves of bread with it. Just the year before, you could've bought over 30,000 loaves with such a note (if that denomination then existed). By November of 1923, you would've needed 800,000 of these notes to buy a single loaf. Here's an interesting article on this sorry episode: http://alphahistory.com/weimargermany/1923-hyperinflation/
Zimbabwe trumps the Weimar hyper inflation , at its highest it was 7.96 billion percent! It is now used as toilet paper, as the Zimbabwe Dollar was abandoned in 2009,the Zimbabwe people use the SA Rand, Euro and US Dollar as currency now.
When Money Dies is an excellent history of the German hyperinflation. It is a fairly quick read and is available on Amazon.
Gee, maybe hyperinflation is already kicking in here in the U.S. - the cheapest the hardback (ISBN 162040236X) can be had for on Amazon is $844.68, while on half.com the price for a copy in "Acceptable" condition (their lowest grade) is $2,100.00. Really.
This is in the "if anyone cares" category. The likeness on this note is derived from the 1532 painting Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze by Hans Hobein the Younger, which is a little ironic considering how problematic everyday commerce was becoming in Germany when these were issued. See: http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html
Here're some more relics representative of the depths that were being reached as the endgame of this infamous currency collapse approached. From top to bottom, the two, ten, and fifty million mark denominations, dated August and September, 1923. These are much smaller in size, about 12 by 8 cm, printed on only one side, and with no pretense of incorporating any aesthetic frills or effective anti-counterfeiting measures (there certainly wasn't any worthwhile profit to be made in forging them). All that really mattered at this stage was what output off the presses could be achieved. But even using the 50 million mark note, by November you would've needed 1,600 of them to purchase that loaf of bread. They literally weren't worth the paper they were printed on by then (if they ever were).
My last post on this topic. The above photos show the worthless notes being put to use as wallpaper and in bricks being played with like building blocks.
Okay, I lied, I do have one more post to put up on this. I've been doing some further reading and research, and it turns out that towards the very end the highest denomination printed was 100 "billion" marks. I put the "billion" in quotation marks because in the nomenclature of the times, that was the term for what we today designate as a trillion (today's billion was referred to then as a "milliard"). 100,000,000,000,000 marks - it'd take 2 million of the fifty million notes (shown earlier in this thread) printed just a couple of months before to equal that amount!
I'm part way through the book now after downloading it. Thanks for the great recommendation! It is interesting that before the hyperinflation really took off, when the Reichsmark was between 100 and 200 to the dollar, it was propped up temporarily by foreign speculators, Americans in particular. People thought that the currency was as low as it could possibly go and that it had nowhere to go but up. This lesson could apply to a lot of things that people buy because they think the price has hit rock bottom.
I agree with the cautions on expectations. For instance look at the people who have, or are currently, buying/stacking 1 oz. copper rounds at higher prices than an industrial pound which today dropped below 3.00 at 2.98. More concerns over China than the US though. The futures for July are @ 2.92 .
