German inflation in the 1920s (Sowell)
June 25th, 2008 | Published in Morality, Economics, History, Quotes, Politics
Perhaps the most famous inflation of the twentieth century occurred in Germany during the 1920s, when 40 marks were worth one dollar in July 1920 but it took more than 4 trillion marks to be worth one dollar by November 1923. People discovered that their life’s savings were not enough to buy a pack of cigarettes.
The German government had, in effect, stolen virtually everything they owned by the simple process of keeping more than 1,700 printing presses running day and night, printing money. Some have blamed the economic chaos and bitter disillusionment of this era for setting the stage of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 350.