When Money Dies : The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany
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Description
When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nation's currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. Germany's finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake. Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. However,"quantitative easing," that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. Whatever the reason for a country's deficit- necessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditure- it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. What if it does not? Germany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.
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Product details
- Paperback | 288 pages
- 140 x 210 x 20mm | 294.84g
- 12 Oct 2010
- The Perseus Books Group
- PublicAffairs,U.S.
- New York, NY, United States
- English
- 1586489941
- 9781586489946
- 25,964
Review Text
Daily Express (London)
"Engrossing and sobering." Allen Mattich, Wall Street Journal , October 1, 2010
"One of the most blood chilling economics books I've ever read." Wall Street Journal , January 30, 2011
"Every body ought to read this book. But baby boomers must." The Guardian
"a brilliant account of how Germany's Weimar Republic was consumed by hyperinflation."
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"Engrossing and sobering." Allen Mattich, Wall Street Journal , October 1, 2010
"One of the most blood chilling economics books I've ever read." Wall Street Journal , January 30, 2011
"Every body ought to read this book. But baby boomers must." The Guardian
"a brilliant account of how Germany's Weimar Republic was consumed by hyperinflation."
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Review quote
Daily Express (London) "Engrossing and sobering." Allen Mattich, Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2010 "One of the most blood chilling economics books I've ever read." Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2011 "Every body ought to read this book. But baby boomers must." The Guardian "a brilliant account of how Germany's Weimar Republic was consumed by hyperinflation."
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About Adam Fergusson
Adam Fergusson studierte Geschichte in Cambridge und wurde später Journalist. Er arbeitete unter anderem für den Glasgow Herald und die Times. Seine weitere berufliche Laufbahn führte ihn in die Politik, wo er Berater des britischen Ministers Lord Howe im Außenministerium wurde. Adam Fergusson hat fünf Bücher veröffentlicht, inklusive dreier Novellen. Fergusson ist ein gern gesehener Gast bei renommierten Fernsehsendern, wie die BBC und CNN, zu den Themen Ökonomie und Wirtschaftsgeschichte.
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