"It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money." (1933 interview)
Weimar hyperinflation
By Ellen Brown
May 20, 2009
Some worried commentators are predicting a massive hyperinflation of the sort suffered by Weimar Germany in 1923, when a wheelbarrow full of paper money could barely buy a loaf of bread. An April 29 editorial in the San Francisco Examiner warned:
"With an unprecedented deficit that's approaching $2 trillion, [the President's 2010] budget proposal is a surefire prescription for hyperinflation. So every senator and representative who votes for this monster $3.6 trillion budget will be endorsing a spending spree that could very well turn America into the next Weimar Republic."1
In an investment newsletter called Money Morning on April 9, Martin Hutchinson pointed to disturbing parallels between current government monetary policy and Weimar Germany's, when 50% of government spending was being funded by seigniorage – merely printing money.2 However, there is something puzzling in his data. He indicates that the British government is already funding more of its budget by seigniorage than Weimar Germany did at the height of its massive hyperinflation; yet the pound is still holding its own, under circumstances said to have caused the complete destruction of the German mark. Something else must have been responsible for the mark's collapse besides mere money-printing to meet the government's budget, but what? And are we threatened by the same risk today? Let's take a closer look at the data.
History Repeats Itself – or Does It?" con't at link below
http://www.augustreview.com/news_commentary/global_banking/the_weimar_hyperinflation%3a_could_it_happen_again?_20090520122/
We have an actor-friend who lives in St.-Paul who has a wheelbarrow filled with Monopoly money sitting in his front yard with a sign attached that reads: Wiemar Dollars!
So there are those who think hyper-inflation is on the way.
Best to plant a garden now!
???
I know I am spending nearly triple what I was spending two years ago on store groceries for less food. I don't know how how people working low wage jobs are making ends meet. I'll be so glad when we get settled in to the point we aren't dependent upon the stores again.
In the mean time, I think it is best for everyone to be prepared to feed their families for quite some time without the benefit of being able to buy anything. I'm also hoping that as soon as we get our house re-roofed, we can start investing in solar panels and the like.