Germany's Hyper Inflation

Many have heard me mention how post WWI Germany endured a bout of hyper inflation from 1919-1923.  You have heard me talk about women using wheelbarrows to enable them to carry enough required cash to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread.

Of course we have all heard the saying, "Those who don't know their history are bound to repeat it, ".....so with that being said, it may be valuable for us all to understand what caused one of the greatest, most technological nations on earth (Germany) to have their savings and currency reduced to nothing.

I will post a few paragraphs below to give you a flavor, but I strongly encourage you to go to the link and spend 10 minutes reading the entire article...which was written in 1981.

Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914. In 1923, at the most fevered moment of the German hyperinflation, the exchange rate between the dollar and the Mark was one trillion Marks to one dollar, and a wheelbarrow full of money would not even buy a newspaper. Most Germans were taken by surprise by the financial tornado.

Why did the German government not act to halt the inflation? It was a shaky, fragile government, especially after the assassination. The vengeful French sent their army into the Ruhr to enforce their demands for reparations, and the Germans were powerless to resist. More than inflation, the Germans feared unemployment. In 1919 Communists had tried to take over, and severe unemployment might give the Communists another chance. The great German industrial combines -- Krupp, Thyssen, Farben, Stinnes -- condoned the inflation and survived it well. A cheaper Mark, they reasoned, would make German goods cheap and easy to export, and they needed the export earnings to buy raw materials abroad. Inflation kept everyone working.


So the printing presses ran, and once they began to run, they were hard to stop. The price increases began to be dizzying. Menus in cafes could not be revised quickly enough. A student at Freiburg University ordered a cup of coffee at a cafe. The price on the menu was 5,000 Marks. He had two cups. When the bill came, it was for 14,000 Marks. "If you want to save money," he was told, "and you want two cups of coffee, you should order them both at the same time."

With the currency went many of the lifetime plans of average citizens. It was the custom for the bride to bring some money to a marriage; many marriages were called off. Widows dependent on insurance found themselves destitute. People who had worked a lifetime found that their pensions would not buy one cup of coffee.


See it here;

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/ess_germanhyperinflation.html

Please remember one thing....paper money ONLY has value because everyone who exchanges it chooses to believe it has value.  It's all based on faith.

Now pay attention to this paragraph also from the article;

All money is a matter of belief. Credit derives from Latin, credere, "to believe." Belief was there, the factories functioned, the farmers delivered their produce. The Central Bank kept the belief alive when it would not let even the government borrow further.

Friends, do you think there is a divine purpose to the fact that Jesus told us all to have faith in nothing but God and God alone?  Could it be because God knew how prone we would be to worshipping Mammon once we started having faith in Mammon's currency?

As you read the article above, can you see some similarities between America today and the conditions that existed in Germany before inflation broke out?

So the printing presses ran, and once they began to run, they were hard to stop.

If the civilized Germans were so changed by this financial meltdown that they soon would embrace Adolf Hitler as their savior....can you see how the people of America may end up embracing the Antichrist when our financial system ultimately collapses?