Rather than pay $1,000 for this out of print book detailing the hyperinflationary Weimar collapse, the Mises Institute got permission to put it online:

http://www.mises.org/web/4016#pg9

I've just started to read it myself. I was however struck by this line:

"In October 1923 it was noted in the British Embassy in Berlin that the number of marks to the pound equalled the number of yards to the sun."

It should be interesting.

Thanks STX_JAY. Do you know if they have a PDF version. By the way, the link doesn't go to the book anymore

Really? The link still works fine for me... I haven't noticed a PDF link for the book yet.

It works fine here.

Here is an interesting extract:

Quote:

Germany tried to meet the colossal costs of the war by an appeal to the self-sacrificing spirit of the people. 'I gave gold for iron' was the slogan for the surrender of gold ornaments and jewellery. 'Invest in War Loan' ran* the appeal to the patriotic sense of duty of all classes. Issue after issue of War Loan transformed the greater part of German private fortunes into paper claims on the State. Our enemies, especially Britain, took another line. They met the cost of war with taxes aimed primarily at those industries and groups to whom the war spelled prosperity. Britain's policy of taxation proved socially more equitable than Germany's policy of War Loans which lost their value after the war was over …

As the war machine lumbered expensively on, circumstances and policies combined to pull the wool over the financial eyes of the German people, not least those classes who had most to lose

Substitue "financial machine" for war machine and you have today, no?

Kudos to those who can grow their own food:

Quote:

The plight of the Austrians, and more particularly of the Viennese, was indeed pathetic after the war. Hungary, if only her peasants had been more willing to share their produce with the starving townspeople, would have been self-sufficient in respect of the necessities of life. That was not so of the remnant of Austria, where cold and hunger set in in earnest in the first post-war winter, and where the returning soldiers, defeated, angry and exhausted, were if possible more susceptible than in Germany to inflammatory talk. Often Vienna and its neighbourhood could exist only upon what Germany had to spare, which was not much. In consequence, the depreciation of the Austrian krone advanced during the first post-war years far ahead of that of the mark, and with even less chance of recovery.

If you want to see what it was like:

Quote:

The force of such conditions on the Austrian bourgeoisie was vividly shown in the early Greta Garbo film The'Joyless Street, made in Vienna by Pabst in 1925. As the symbol of untouchable purity in a milieu of want, greed and corruption, finally finding truth and happiness in the arms of an American volunteer, Garbo's role may lack persuasion today; but from the odious butcher insulting and taunting the food queues at his shop, refusing meat to women he found unattractive or unwilling, to the scenes of the unlicensed, gluttonous revelry of the nightlife of the speculator and profiteer, and to the ultimate attack by a starving, angry crowd on a cafe full of merrymakers — the film was a faithful reflection of the times.

More eyewitness accounts from a diary: Compelling stuff - especially about the stock market.

Quote:

In November, a year after the Armistice, Frau Eisenmenger wrote that her position was alarmingly worse, the financial situation beyond her understanding. The krone, at 25 Swiss centimes the previous Christmas, was now quoted at one-twelfth of a centime. Her shares, however, were going up. Gambling on the stock exchange had become the fashion — the only way to avoid losing all one's money and perhaps to add to it. Many new bankers were giving people advice, the flight from the krone governing all transactions. 'Meanwhile,' Frau Eisenmenger wrote,

the large numbers of unemployed, their passions fermented by the Communists, are seething with discontent … a mob has attempted to set the Parliament building on fire. Mounted policemen were torn from their horses, which were slaughtered in the Ringstrasse and the warm bleeding flesh dragged away by the crowd … the rioters clamoured for bread and work … Side by side with unprecedented want among the bulk of the population, there is a striking display of luxury among those who are benefitting from the inflation. New nightclubs are being opened. These clubs have the further effect of greatly intensifying the class hatred of the proletariate against the bourgeoisie.

Oh wow.

Thanks for the excerpts. I can't wait to take a look a the book when I get home.

It's also available in audio at audible.
http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B004DEYAS....