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Funny Money: Difference between revisions
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** It's a [[Did Not Do the Research|common misconception]] that hyperinflation was caused by the Weimar Government attempting to pay off its war debts by just printing money. The actual cause of hyperinflation was the 1923 Ruhr Crisis, when the Weimar Republic missed a payment on its war reparations, prompting a joint French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. The Ruhr was Germany's industrial heartland, so when the German Government called for a general strike in opposition to the French, it crippled the German economy. Cue massive hyperinflation.
*** Actually, the Weimar's default on its payment was just one a ''long series'' of defaults in which Germany ''deliberately refused'' to pay reparations, despite the fact that it was well within their power to do so. This is what eventually prompted the occupation of the Ruhr. When the workers in the Ruhr went on strike, the German government decided to keep paying them with printed currency in order to reward them for "passively resisting." Cue massive hyperinflation.
** There is a famous [https://www.igolder.com/glossary/hyperinflation/Fiat-Money-Is-Nearly-Worthless.jpg image] of a woman feeding the stove with money, since it's worth less than firewood. Money was also used as
** There is a popular urban legend (attributed to many times and places) about two women who try buying bread at a bakery. They had a huge pile of worthless Marks in a wheelbarrow outside. When they went back out someone had stolen the wheelbarrow but left the money on the floor.
** Another one involves someone going into a restaurant and ordering an egg and coffee, which was (say) 7,000 marks. An hour later, when the bill came, the price had risen to 10,000.
** Or the sad story of a German family who sold their house to emigrate to America. When they arrived in Hamburg, they had to find out that not only was the money for their house not enough to pay the ticket to the US, but not even enough for the train ticket back to their hometown.
** There are stamps that still exist that are for the postage of 20 '''billion''' Marks (actually 20 '''milliard''', due to differences in how the US and Europe calculate one billion, but it is still an unimaginably huge number to mail a letter...) So many of them were printed and so few were actually used that you can get mint uncancelled specimens for little more than a song, but a genuinelly cancelled and postally-used one could set you back a pretty ''pfennig''.
* During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the value of Polish zloty (currency code: PLZ) fell so badly that before the redenomination in 1995, the largest bill in circulation (introduced in 1992) was "only"
* Of course, these examples pale into comparison with the post-war Hungarian pengő, which experienced the '''single worst example of hyperinflation in history'''. The 100 million B-pengő (i.e. ''100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengő'') [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HUP_100MB_1946_obverse.jpg note] is the single highest denomination bill ever issued, according to [[The Other Wiki]]. And that banknote was effectively '''worthless'''. (A 1 milliard B-Pengő note was printed but not issued.) At the height of the hyperinflation, prices doubled in every fifteen hours.
** To quote one source (''Postwar'' by Tony Judt) "by the time the pengo was replaced by the forint in August 1946 the dollar value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation was just one-thousandth of one cent." Most triumphant example indeed.
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[[Category:Sublime Rhyme]]
[[Category:Funny Money]]
[[Category:Trope
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