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Title: When Money Dies
Subtitle: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany
Author: Adam Fergusson
Narrator: Antony Ferguson
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9 hrs
Language: English
Release date: 12-10-10
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 148 votes
Genres: History, European
Publisher's Summary:
When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nation's currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy.
Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. Germany's finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake.
Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. However, quantitative easing, that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. Whatever the reason for a country's deficit - necessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax, or blindness to expenditure - it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. What if it does not? Germany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.
Critic Reviews:
Engrossing and sobering. (Daily Express, London)
One of the most blood chilling economics books Ive ever read. (Allen Mattich, The Wall Street Journal)
Members Reviews:
informative
This book enlightened me on many shades of the hyperinflation in Germany, both before WWI, after, and leading up to WWII. The narrator, though not so spirited, does a decent job. I think if you're not already interested in the subject, this would bore you though. It's packed with information.
Disappointed
This book did have its interesting tidbits and the narrator is fine, so I didn't feel I wasted a credit or anything. But due to this being such a fascinating subject, I was rather disappointed. the writer wrote it like a boring history text and left me with more question then he answered. I hope I can find other books on this subject.
Useless details, missing the big points
The subject matter is fascinating and very little covered by history books. It is obviously very touchy for an English author since it might point to the unfairness of the Versailles treaty.
So this author is endlessly beating around the bush by telling you the price of eggs, train tickets and other data that makes your head spin but he's not developing enough the big picture.
So yes, there was inflation in the 1920s but how did they get there? Why did the Kaiser abdicate? Who took power? What was the mechanisms of tax collection and why did they collapse?
The treaty of Versailles and the subsequent adjustments to the war reparation are mentioned in very few sentences, but very under developed...
So if you want to know how much was an egg in Berlin during 1920, 1921, 1922... etc go ahead and get this book.
The author is incredibly proud of this data and he assumes you know all the other details of the Weimar Germany.
Well, I didn't so I expected a lot more...
May be a very underrated book
Got a little tired of the story after a while printing printing printing. But the author really gives you the sense of what it was like to be a German at that time.
