When Money Dies cover art

When Money Dies

The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany

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When Money Dies

Written by: Adam Fergusson
Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
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About this listen

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.

©2010 Adam Fergusson (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
20th Century Business & Careers Economics Germany Deficit Imperialism Business War
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What the critics say

“Engrossing and sobering.” ( Daily Express, London)
“One of the most blood chilling economics books I’ve ever read.” (Allen Mattich, The Wall Street Journal)

What listeners say about When Money Dies

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Too long not as interesting as it could have been

This book could have been shortened half way down and been great.

It felt very repetitive... It was an exhaustively accurate explanation of what happened to money in Germany when hyperinflation struck.

However, it felt very dense...I learned a lot, but I think there was more information than required to tell this story.

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Difficult to follow in Audio format

Difficult to keep your attention on the listening, a lot of historical information, but listening is difficult to get all the detailed information. would be better as a text book you could read, re-read, underline and mark the important facts...

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