by Taki Theodoracopulos
GSTAAD—Back in 1975 Adam Ferguson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published a very important book with a very apt modern title, When Money Dies. It was about the Weimar hyperinflation nightmare, something our so-called leaders might well think about, which of course they will not. We are so dumbed-down by reality and talent shows on the idiot box, why bother to bring up unpleasant subjects? Only recently I read somewhere that the obnoxious John Prescott defended the war criminal Tony Blair and his party’s record, which is not unlike Greens praising arms manufacturers for population control. People are simply too dumb, too cowed, or too interested in celebrity goings-on to care about what a slob like Prescott bloviates about. What they should have done is throw him overboard—he was on a freebie cruise—but instead they silently listened to his bad-taste jokes and defense of Blair.
Inflation is what kills wealth, unless the goodies are in property, ships, or other such solid matter, but let’s not get too academic about it. The only ones inflation helps are debtors, which are most Western governments nowadays. No wonder they don’t mind piling on the debt. But for us normal folk, inflation can be a very big pain you-know-where. Did you know that one pound sterling back in 1923 is the equivalent of 42 pounds today? Think about it. You could give a nice-looking German girl one pound as a tip and hope that she might let you walk her home after she finished working at the restaurant. Girls back then were moral, and a walk was the equivalent of a f—- today. Nowadays you’d need to come up with 42 pounds, and she’s more likely to thank you for the tip and inform you not to get your hopes up because she lives upstairs with another woman (mein partner) and that three’s a crowd.
“The only ones inflation helps are debtors, which are most Western governments nowadays. No wonder they don’t mind piling on the debt.”The great economist Taki says that tipping a pound makes one look a gent, but £42 makes one look vulgar and a fool. When I was a very small boy I remember running out of the house and picking up millions off the street. This was 1943 and the drachma had just been devalued again and bills of one million were scattered all over, worthless. I didn’t understand inflation at my young age, so I scooped them all up and brought them home, where Fraulein gave me a wintry smile and tried to explain. She, in fact, had been ruined by the 1923 inflation and had to go to work as a nanny to rich foreign children, so she knew what she was talking about.
In 1923 a billion meant a million times a million, as it does today, but unlike today, there were no real billionaires around, except for the false ones in the Weimar Republic. Just imagine. At the end of the Great War one could in theory “have bought 500,000,000,000 eggs for the same price as that for which, five years later, only a single egg was procurable.” I am quoting Adam Ferguson. Papa Hemingway wrote a wonderful news story about German inflation called “War Medals for Sale.” He describes how a distinguished gentleman offers a few medals to a man selling apples from a cart. The man pulls open a drawer in the cart and shows it to him. It’s full of medals. The gent says nothing and walks away with dignity. When I first read it I died a little. So you fight for your country and what you get in return cannot even buy you an apple. No wonder Hitler came to power.
My father-in-law told me that paying bills by post became a no-no because the stamp cost more than the amount being paid, no matter how large. In the Austrian Embassy in Rome where his father was ambassador, the staff went unpaid but continued to work out of respect for His Excellency the Prince. He was so disgusted he paid out of his pocket, resigned, and went home.
I write all this because of Uncle Sam and the Bank of England’s appetite for “quantitative easing,” the bureaucrooks’ lingo for printing moolah. Why can’t they simply call it printing money? QE is an American invention, like reality shows and celebrity programs.The Brits simply follow, the way they did for Iraq and Afghanistan. The bankers tell us that printing money will stimulate the economy. The great economist Taki is not convinced. Stopping the presses is like stopping a VLCC—a very large tanker—it can take up to twenty miles. Worse, it takes a very long time for inflation to slow up even after you’ve stopped printing. At present, inflation is running at three times the rate of public and private sector pay increases, which means everyone is getting poorer except for the bankers, the dealmakers, and those who owe big money to the big banks for the dealmakers’ financing of their shady mega-deals.
Read the rest here.
"In 1923 a billion meant a million times a million, as it does today,"
ReplyDeleteIMHO, the credibility of any article with such a glaring factual error is suspect. A billion is equal to a thousand times a million, not a million times a million. However, such an error probably should not be too surprising since the author is purported to be a "great economist."
"When Money Dies" was published in 1975 and written about the 20's. From the note added to the 2010 reprint: "In dealing with the stupendous figures with which Germany wrestled in the Weimar period, the book maintains the same numerical designations as were used then as appeared on her banknotes. That is to say, when a milliard meant one thousand million, when a billion was still a million times a million, when the term billiard was coined to indicate a thousand times more, and a trillion was 1,000,000 cubed. To have converted these words to the more modern usage, when a billion boasts only nine noughts and a trillion a mere twelve, might, I fancy, have added to what a German minister of the 1920s justly called the 'delirium of milliards'."
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