Posted on 09/18/2013 12:04:29 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914. In 1923, at the most fevered moment of the German hyperinflation, the exchange rate between the dollar and the Mark was one trillion Marks to one dollar, and a wheelbarrow full of money would not even buy a newspaper. Most Germans were taken by surprise by the financial tornado...
Ordinary citizens worked at their jobs, sent their children to school and worried about their grades, maneuvered for promotions and rejoiced when they got them, and generally expected things to get better. But the prices that had doubled from 1914 to 1919 doubled again during just five months in 1922. Milk went from 7 Marks per liter to 16; beer from 5.6 to 18. There were complaints about the high cost of living. Professors and civil servants complained of getting squeezed. Factory workers pressed for wage increases. An underground economy developed, aided by a desire to beat the tax collector...
So the printing presses ran, and once they began to run, they were hard to stop. The price increases began to be dizzying. Menus in cafes could not be revised quickly enough. A student at Freiburg University ordered a cup of coffee at a cafe. The price on the menu was 5,000 Marks. He had two cups. When the bill came, it was for 14,000 Marks. "If you want to save money," he was told, "and you want two cups of coffee, you should order them both at the same time."
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/
The U.S. has hyperinflation just like 1923 Germany?
The U.S. has hyperinflation just like 1923 Germany?
Not even close. US commands the reserve currency, and unless something else comes along to replace it, a scenario such as post WWI Germany won’t happen here.
The dynamics just aren’t there for hyperinflation and won’t be for some time.
Meltzer has been saying that for a while. And he isn't selling gold!
I remember as a kid revving up the old Victrola , tossing on a 78rpm slab of music and crank away..
HaPPY Days Are Here Again..
NO more slave and stash away
HaPPy Days are here agaaaain!!
Side note,, Coast Guard hell just flew by.. Ohh Baby! If I could fly!!!
Heli :-) (auto complete sucks on my android)
Germany finally put a brake on hyperinflation by an infusion of foreign capital under the Dawes plan. We could do the same by getting gold from...from...OK, I’m working on it...
Not now, but it is coming.
The clock is ticking...the dollar is tanking...my point is, this will end poorly.
Don’t get too complacent about the dollar being the reserve currency.
I noticed that right away, also. I hate it when that word is misused.
If I remember my history, the 20s didn't end well for Germany, the 30s and 40s even worse.
The US dollar will soon no longer be the reserve currency.
I think it is much more likely that we will experience deflation. The Government is pumping money into the system which is keeping prices artificially high.
A new Chevrolet or Ford that was $2,000 to $3,000 is now $25,000 to $30,000.
A loaf of bread that was 18¢ is now $1.50 to $2.00.
A package of cigarettes that was 25¢ to 30¢ is now $5.00.
A 5¢ candy bar is now at least 50¢ and it has shrunk to about 2/3 of its original size.
Regular gasoline that was around 25¢ to 30¢ a gallon is now $3.50 to $4.00.
And wages that used to be $1.50 an hour are now $15.00 an hour.
And $10,000 in retirement savings from back then has shrunk by 90% in living expenses purchasing power.
People who have jobs can survive that sort of inflation, but sooner or later (certainly within 50 years), one no longer is earning wages but trying to live on what one scrimped to save.
Inflation wipes out savings. Wages is only half the picture.
“Everybody shout it now/there’s no one who can doubt it now/let us sing a song of cheer again/happy days are here again. Yeah, right.
“And wages that used to be $1.50 an hour are now $15.00 an hour.”
What about those that retired and only made $1.50 having to live in a $15.00 world? You’ll be there.
That makes the point that the dollar is only worth 10% of what is was back then, doesn't it?
You now need to be paid roughly 10 times as much money to buy the same products.
So we handle ten times as much paper but basically live at the same level.
So at that rate of inflation, even without hyperinflation, we can project that a new car will cost about $250,000 in 2050.
A gallon of gas will be $35 - $40.
A loaf of bread will be $15 to $20.
A one day admission to Disney World will be about $1,000.
A package of cigarettes will be $50 - a full carton will be $500.
But the minimum wage will be at least $75 an hour and most people will demand $150 an hour or more.
Well said - that cuts right to the heart of the matter.
Plus, if you manage to save $50,000 it will only have the value that $5,000 has today.
Did the German’s cause hyperinflation deliberately like Obamao, the Democrats and RINOs are doing?
That's what the gold peddlers were saying when they were saying gold was a great buy at $1,800/oz. They were wrong, about gold and about the dollar tanking. Click here, pick a country, and look at how since 2008 the dollar's been keeping its buying power better than the Euro, htey yen, UK pound, etc.
While I don't expect anyone here to admit they're wrong, I also don't expect anyone here to be willing to buy gold from me at $1,800/oz. Cheap mindless talk is one thing but real life business is another.
What the bankers have done over the past 100 years is force people out of their savings accounts and into volatile “investment” mediums that the bankers then get to take even more off the top. People find they can lose everything. The crash of 2008 did just that to millions of people. I saw people with $65k per year retirement incomes to $25k. I saw people lose all but a small portion of their retirement accounts but thought those accounts were safe.
If we cannot save a dollar and spend that dollar in our lifetimes for the same buying power then someone took money out of the system they shouldn’t have.
I understand the point you are making.
Respectfully, I don't think you grasp the point other posters are making.
The fact that the French, Limeys and Japs might be worse off than Americans is no comfort at all when our money buys us less and less at the market every week.
Obama knows where it leads and that is his plan.
“Cheap mindless talk is one thing but real life business is another.”
Good post. Spot on.
It's good we agree that the dollar is one of the strongest currencies in the world and the dollar is definitely not tanking as far as world currencies go.
our money buys us less and less at the market every week.
With all respect, "less and less" and even more "less" of whatever that something is that we're buying means little when we talk to adults about money. We deal with the fact that dollars buy more gold, silver, and platinum than before, yet most people still call those metals "precious".
That is an arrogant statement.
The adults I know all eat food, not gold.
And be assured they really are are concerned that their money buys less food and other necessities every week.
Okay, well, I don’t know where you think this mindless money creation will lead. Good times? :)
Seriously, when in history has continuous monetary creation NOT led to a devaluation of the currency? I really am not an expert, just trying to think carefully about this administration’s terrible policies.
tx
If what you really meant all along without saying was food and shelter, then we could always look at falling farm crop prices or the weak housing market but let's not. My take is the fact that somewhere someplace there is a price of something that's gone up and that's what's proving that the "dollar is tanking".
We agree on the facts even while we disagree on which are relevant and how they're described. That's something.
We're good; we can agree that humankind has been creating money for thousands of years, and somewhere someplace over the millennia there've been cases of falling prices. While some people can accept that as proof that we are now looking at a tanking dollar, many of us want better proof.
Not quite.
Of course the dollar is tanking as far as purchasing power for Americans is concerned.
You pointed out that you believe the dollar is strong relative to foreign currencies.
That may be, but it dosn't lessen the negative impact of the declining purchasing power on the less-than-wealthy.
But it does seem we agree that the bad news is that dollar is tanking - declining in value.
To you, the good news is that other currencies are tanking faster than the dollar.
We are all heading racing toward disaster but some are travelling faster and others slower.
That gives those with money and the desire, a way to speculate and possibly make a profit on the way down.
Everyone else gets two things:
- Bragging rights that the dollar won't be the first currency to hit the bottom
-The dubious satisfaction of knowing there are others worse off than the USA.
I was kind of wondering what “Coast Guard Hell” was! ;-P
Have a great day, FRiend.
We shouldn't have to run in circles back your post 25 (re "the French, Limeys and Japs might be worse off than Americans") so let's keep with the fact that the dollar is stronger as a currency than other nation's currencies are.
Of course the dollar is tanking as far as purchasing power for Americans is concerned.
We're going our separate ways here because those of us in the business community rate purchasing power so as to include prices in general as a transparent market basket. Others go with feelings that translate poorly in a world of hard financial realities. That's fine, and I'd even bet that most people take the 'feelings' approach and this is has been a big factor in Obama's success at the polls. The problem is that the 'feelings' approach is just not that successful in dealing with economic forces that affect so many of us.
Thanks for the chat though, it was interesting for me to have to look up say, platinum and farm crop prices with ones I was already familiar to see how very dangerous collapsing prices has become. I needed to know that.
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