[Kartographer]

From this:


To this:

To this?

[Kartographer]

Preppers’ PING!!

[Chode]

[Bon mots]

[Bon mots]

Download the book, When Money Dies.

It's an amazing read.

[OldNavyVet]

In 1933, President Roosveldt used an executive order to confiscate all privately held gold in the USA; but silver dimes, quarters and half-dollars remained in use and the dollar itself didn't go to hell.

Hold on to coins, folks; silver coins aren't made anymore, but the metal content will give every coin some value.

[marron]

In 1999 Ecuador’s currency collapsed.

Overnight, the government closed the banks and froze all bank accounts. People had to get by for about a month on what money they had in their pockets and what food they had in their pantry. Neighbors helped neighbors, families pulled together, but it was not easy.

The banks re-opened within a couple of weeks as I recall, and after a couple more, the paychecks started rolling again, this time denominated in dollars. They did away with the Sucre and adopted the US dollar as the official currency. The middle and upper class had been dollarized for years anyway, this just extended the dollar to the working and poorer classes.

When the banks re-opened, the Sucre to dollar exchange was about 20% of what it had been before. So overnight people got an 80% cut in pay, and saw their groceries go up 5 times. Obviously things then had to find a new equilibrium.

Frozen accounts were returned to their owners about 18 months later as I recalled, paid at the new rate (about 20 cents on the dollar).

That’s the down side. The up side is that by adopting the dollar they stabilized the economy, mostly eliminated inflation, and the economy turned around. They overthrew the president that did it, but kept his reforms.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

These sorts of articles are annoying because they compress years worth of bad news to look like it all happens in a week.

Here is the Weimar hyperinflation chart. It took five years, and everybody saw it coming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GermanyHyperChart.jpg

Here is the Zimbabwe hyperinflation chart. They had years of bad inflation until 2000, and from there it was a curve much like Germany.

The same with Yugoslavia, except that they also used redenomination, say 10,000 of the old currency is worth 1 of the new currency, so it’s a bit harder to track. And yet it still took years.

So the bottom line is that if you had $10,000 at home, you would likely see such problems coming from a long way off. And it wouldn’t matter if there was a bank holiday, or a credit collapse, etc., because you have your money under your control and can act on it without anyone else’s permission.

[immadashell]

In Weimar Germany it was reported that a man going to a market with a suitcase full of money to buy food was mugged. The money was thrown on the street and the mugger made off with the suitcase (which had greater value).