Yeah. $23.4 trillion here, $23.4 trillion there ... pretty soon you're talking about real money!
Yep, $23.4 trillion is a stack of $1000.00 bills 313.4 miles high.
I'd love to be sitting on that stack of bills. ON a calm day, of course. Things could get a little shaky up there on a windy day. :^)
Effects of the Inflation
Prices and incomes changed daily. A former student recalls: "One fine day, I dropped into a café to have a cup of coffee. As I went in I noted that the price was say 5,000 marks - just about what I had in my pocket. I sat down, read my paper, drank my coffee and spent altogether one hour on the café, and then asked for the bill. The waiter duly presented me with the bill for 8,000 marks. 'Why 8,000 marks?' I asked? The mark had dropped in the meantime I was told. The 'index' based on the dollar exchange rate had altered so much that the price had gone up by 60% while I was sitting at the table. So I gave the waiter all the money I had - and he was generous enough to leave it at that."
People who did not convert their savings into tangible assets (or Sachwerte) lost them. Pensions became worthless, the middle class was by and large reduced to poverty. Many starved to death. Conditions were so harsh that people even ate dog meat: around 20,000 dogs were slaughtered for human consumption in 1923 alone.
Typical is the case of a bank which, unwilling to keep open an account with 68,000 Marks, informed the customer that it was to be closed. "Since we have no banknotes in small enough denominations at our disposal, we have rounded up the sum to 1 million marks. Enclosed: one 1 million mark note."
Emergency Money
On the 17th July 1922, a law was passed to permit the printing of emergency money with certain safeguards. After that municipal banks, the railways, local authorities and also private firms used this law to start printing their own money. In the end it was estimated that more than 2,000 kinds of emergency money were circulating, and many of them were not authorised.
Many municipalities, reacting to the Reichsbank notes which became more drab and dull, took pride by giving their money and attractive look by good design and witty texts - often in verse or the local dialect. Some advertised their local industries by using leather, linen or silk to print on. One town issued money consisting of leather suitable for soling shoes as a truly inflation-proof form of currency, while one private firm promised the bearer "one pound of rye."
Before World War I, the highest denomination note had been the 1,000 mark note, affectionately known as the "brown rag". Being the equivalent of some 250 US dollars, it was rarely seen by most people before the inflation. Today, a note in perfect condition fetches no more than a couple of dollars or so.
From "Life during the Inflation of 1923" at http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/5373/notgeld/1923life.htm
And since they don't even make $1000 bills any more, you'd never be able to find enough of them, so you'd have to go down to $100 bills, and bump up the height by an order of magnitude. 3134 miles high!