When Money Dies

Weimar Germany was not the first regime to collapse under the weight of excessive money creation, and it won’t be the last...

by Craig Hemke via Sprott Money News

Back in the summer of 2011, many of us were reading about the Weimar Republic and its hyperinflationary downfall. A decade later, it’s time to revisit the history.

The go-to book in the summer of 2011 was “When Money Dies” by Adam Fergusson. Originally published in 1975, Fergusson updated the text in 2010, and following the initial onslaught of debt monetization and QE1 and QE2, it became required reading.

Maybe you didn’t read it back then. If not, you should do so now, in the summer of 2022. If you read it a decade ago, it’s time to crack it open once more.

Now, you might be saying, “Hey, look. It’s been twelve years and I’m not falling for that hyperinflation stuff again”. OK, fine. You can believe whatever you want. However, Weimar Germany was not the first regime to collapse under the weight of excessive money creation, and it won’t be the last.

Additionally, have you ever heard these quotes? The first from Shakespeare, the second attributed to the 19th-century American humorist Mark Twain.

These two idioms instantly came to mind last week as soon as I cracked open “When Money Dies” for the first time in eleven years. And why? All I had to do was make it to page 3 before what Fergusson wrote nearly fifty years ago became instantly relevant to today.

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