Germany money after WW I (How many parallels to Germany are there?)

[peacetalksforall]

Paying for a war? Potential parallel?

"After WWI, Germany was plunged into one of the worst inflations ever to hit a western country as the government struggled with the truly massive punitive damages demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. During this brief period of hyper-inflation, people who did not convert their savings into tangible assets lost them completely . Many bank accounts were closed because even large pre-war sums of 100,000 Marks were longer worth even the price of a postage stamp. The middle class was by and large reduced to poverty, theft and petty crime soared, pensions became worthless and many people starved to death."

http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/5373/notgeld.htm

Don't our leaders care? More, more, more war.

Our leaders have to tell us that it's not going to happen.

If there is a division presently between the rich and the lower middle and poor, what will it be if we keep spending for this on behalf of the barons and war profiting ceo's and politicians.

[Selatius]

1. Several parallels if you excuse the mountain that is magnitude.

The inflation you're seeing now is nowhere near the hyperinflation Germany post-war saw. Pray you don't ever see that kind of inflation on US soil.

[Fovea]

2. Argentinian style hyper inflation would be bad enough.

That would leave a fleet of SUV/Living Quarters without plates parked in Walmarts across the land. And rough justice for revenuers.

[enid602]

3. Argentina

That's probably why Argentina hasn't started too many wars lately, has been energy dependent for years and has encouraged massive exports to China (beef, produce and designer clothing) instead of bitching about the unfairness of free trade. They've learned from their past mistakes; I hope we do, too.

[Fovea]

7. And they told the WTO to do an anatomically impossible act

As should we all.

[dipsydoodle]

6. Hungary 1945/46 dwarfed Germany early twenties

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_money_of_the_Hungarian_peng%C5%91

You need to scroll down to the above time period. Largest note printed was a billion billion Pengos - that 10 to the 21st power <in Europe a billion is a million million - not your lower thousand million>

Workers refused monetary payment and were paid in the goods they produced which they then exhcnaged for food etc - for example bricks were loaded onto wagons on payday and exchanged with farmers for food.

[formercia]

8. I had some Weimar Republic postage stamps

overprinted 1 Billion Marks.

That's a lot of money to mail a letter.

it could very easily happen here. All of the Federal Reserve IOU's that this country has been flinging about the World since WWII to maintain the Pax Americana are about to become useless for little more than toilet tissue.

[leftofthedial]

4. so this whole economic meltdown is engineered

to destroy the middle class and clear the way for a fascist takeover?

[Mendocino]

5. My maternal Grandparents

scraped up what they could, along with funds sent from relatives in the US, left Germany in 1923 and came here. They told me horror stories about the conditions that existed there.

Now the US is spending 12 billion a month on war, with no end in sight. The ultimate cost will be over a trillion (or more).

Perhaps I should migrate back to Germany.