When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson

When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson

When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nation's currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. Germany's finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake. Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. However,"quantitative easing,” that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. Whatever the reason for a country's deficit- necessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditure- it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. What if it does not? Germany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.

Daily Express (London) "Engrossing and sobering" Allen Mattich, Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2010 "One of the most blood chilling economics books I've ever read." Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2011 "Every body ought to read this book. But baby boomers must." The Guardian "a brilliant account of how Germany's Weimar Republic was consumed by hyperinflation."

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781586489946
ISBN 10	1586489941
Title	When Money Dies
Author	Adam Fergusson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	PublicAffairs,U.S.
Year published	2010-10-12
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.