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all 22 comments

[–]Oshitreally 15 points16 points  (4 children)

I remember reading about how French people would cross the border and buy out entire bakeries for the equivalent of 40 cents. I always wondered how that made the Germans carrying wagons of cash to get a loaf of bread feel

[–]Oshitreally 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I get downvotes all the time on Reddit, but this one surprised me

[–]HocusLocus 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Becuz you seemed to sympathize with Germans who were not really Nazis (1923) but the downvote brigade are not our brightest. Around 1919 when postwar inflation had only reached 10x my grandfather scratched into the back of a church pew in Hohenthann Bavaria in German, "I am going to America." He passed through Ellis Island in 1920 and escaped the worst of it. And we got the best of him.

[–]Oshitreally 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's an awesome bit of family history right there.

[–]slvrbullet87 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sucks for the people who need a team of mules to buy some food, but if you are the baker, at least the money you received would be worth something when you got off work.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

That's a lot of 0's.

[–]ltkettch16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There’s at least 6 zeros

[–]richardnyc 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I'm sure they thought this was as worse it can get in Germany...

[–]usernamesareawaste 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Buy Bitcoin!

[–]leroy_hoffenfeffer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To all the MMT people: yes, inflation does exist. No, you cant pretend it doesn't. It's not some philosophical or theoretical idea you can debate like string theory or many world theory.

It's like gravity: the more you print, the less it's worth. All objects fall into the nearest larger gravitational field.

[–]cosmos-hime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This sure makes inflation a lot easier to understand

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

I’m a grown, highly educated woman but I seem to a mental block to understanding inflation. How does the dollar etc become so devalued? Doesn’t it’s devaluation indicate the economy is flooded with money?

[–]Magnus7719 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Germany was slammed, i mean SLAMMED with debt after WWI. The government had to print more money to pay it. The deflation becomes worse because people sell the currency, making more available, further reducing the value, so more people sell... just like a stock collapse.

[–]Gemmabeta 3 points4 points  (0 children)

At 1919, German war reparations was pegged at 269 billion gold marks--equivalent to 100,000 tonnes of gold if all converted to bullion. That's about half of the gold that has ever existed on Earth.

[–]SmoothOpawriter[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

It's case-by-case but here's an excerpt from the wiki article: "The Treaty of Versailles imposed a huge debt on Germany that could be paid only in gold or foreign currency. With its gold depleted, the German government attempted to buy foreign currency with German currency, equivalent to selling German currency in exchange for payment in foreign currency, but the resulting increase in the supply of German marks on the market caused the German mark to fall rapidly in value, which greatly increased the number of marks needed to buy more foreign currency. "

Basically, Germany had nothing backing the currency - i.e. gold standard, so their purchasing power declined rapidly when they flooded the market with additional currency to cover the costs of paying reparations. They didn't really have a choice though, with severe sanctions and noting backing the value of the Mark, it simply de-valued.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Technically the US doesn’t have a gold standard either

[–]TheOnlyGaz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not anymore, but it was the two Great Wars that killed it. By the end of both wars everyone owed the US money to such a degree that major governments just started trading in debt to the US. Ever since then it's kinda stuck.

[–]donsterkay -5 points-4 points  (3 children)

And yet Hitler could afford to train, feed and arm his army! Read about Prescott Bush. An he wasn't the only one. Henry Ford idolized him too.

[–]CitationX_N7V11C 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Read what about Prescott Bush? That he held a 1% stake and sat on the board of a holding company that had some assets in a German transport corporation? Or that after his political enemies used the accusations of trading with the Nazis that Congress investigated and cleared him of all wrong doing? Or that this bit of history keeps getting dragged up because certain people still can't get over their hatred of his grandson despite it being an unhealthy obsession?

Which part would they read about?

[–]donsterkay -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

source? and your willing to accept %1 evil?

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A lot can happen in 15 years...