Was the inflation in the Weimar Republic the worst ever in the history of the world? How about the 20th century Western World? Their currency started off at 4.2 to the dollar and ended up at 4.2 trillion to the dollar. When the new currency was introduced the old currency was traded at 1 trillion to 1 with the new currency. Has any infaltion ever been worse?
The 1946 hyperinflation in Hungary was far worse. At the worst time prices more than doubled every day.
Guinness says that
The 130 million trillion figure is apparently using the English definition of 10^12, in European trillions of 10^18 that would be simply 130 trillion.
well I dunno how it rates with the Weimar but the Bolivian was pretty bad. Something like 60 000 percent inflation. (according to the PBS documentary Commanding heights. The rate increased 1% every ten minutes).
Compared to some episodes of hyperinflation, Germany’s maximum monthly inflation rate of 3.25 million % was fairly mild. The two best examples are Hungary 1945-1946 and Yugoslavia 1993-1995.
Hungary
Yugoslavia
Hungary issued the world’s largest denomination note 10[sup]20[/sup] Pengos.
Yugoslavia issued the banknote with the most zeroes (15)
You’d think that at the absolute least, inflation would stop when the currency is worth as much as the material it’s printed on? 
What I don’t understand is how such inflation can occur over long periods without a total collapse of the cash economy. Why would any merchant accept cash? Why would any worker accept cash? Why didn’t people insist on being paid in kind, or by barter? Or why didn’t merchants or employers issue script or coupons (essentially printing their own money)?
I can understand how hyperinflation can work if you are losing 50% of the value of your money per month, but how can it work if prices double every DAY? How can banks function? What purpose would a bank serve?
It doesn’t cost much to add a few more zeros to notes. When they were printing the 10[sup]20[/sup] Pengos I doubt they were also printing 1 Pengo notes.
Dhurr. Me dre2xl, me dumb.
In Yugoslavia it stopped when the government stopped printing new currency. Who’d have thought :rolleyes:
Mr Ruadh is Serbian and has horror stories from that era. His parents owned a videostore and they had to keep changing their prices several times a day. Workers would take their paycheques and immediately run to the nearest foreign exchange place to get their wages in German marks, otherwise they’d be worthless.
You can still buy the notes with 15 zeros as souvenirs. They cost about €2.
The workers who were issued government money would have been government workers. They didn’t have a choice. Printing coupons etc would have been illegal. Regular folk mostly got by with a mixture of foreign currency and/or barter.
This is what happened in Weimar Germany. The middle class, who kept their money in banks, had their life savings wiped out by this. Some say this was part of the reason for the rise of Hitler.
But my question is, if you crashed your car and your son was in the front seat, but you knew he was a Hitlet, and would one day hyperinflate the currency, would you do it?
:smack: Save him, that is.
It’s terrible to be laughing at those poor people, but for some bizarre reason this just totally cracked me up. It sounds like monetary policy as enacted by a couple of first graders:
“This is a million pengoes!”
“Nuh-uh! Well, then, this is a billion pengoes!”
“Oh, yeah? Well–well–this is four hundred million quadrillion pengoes!”
How much is that in Q-Berts?
I did it. Just once. In 1960. For about 20 minutes.
Ducks out as the crowd rises in rage at the use of dumb SDMB jokes in GQ