[robowombat]

'To provide an adequate cash flow to the working class, Hitler promised to pay them once a week, then twice a week, then once a day. When this failed, he allowed workers two hours off work every day to trundle wheelbarrows full of German currency, which barely sufficed to buy a loaf of bread.'

This is just flat incorrect and detracts from the force of the article. Hitler was invited to form a government in 1933 because in one of the regular government crisis that the Wiemar Republic found itself in during the Great Depression no other non-left faction could pull together a parliamentary plurality. His accession in 33 had nothing to do with the hyper inflation period of 1922-23 when the German government deliberately crashed the Mark in order to pay the French war reparations in worthless currency. I suppose Hitler in the Beer hall Putsch era used this event to indite the current government for destroying the savings of the lower middle class who were even then the backbone of the NSDAP. But inflation didn't bring Hitler to the Chancellery. The Great Depression did that. In the Depression currency deflation is what went on. That is the key to what these Persian loons may pull off. First hyper inflation that crashes the economy then sharp deflation through mass economic dislocation. The sort of authoritarian regimes that would be ushered in by this nightmare scenario are incalculable. The results could indeed lead to some sort of global conflict.

[Travis McGee]

That is the key to what these Persian loons may pull off. First hyper inflation that crashes the economy then sharp deflation through mass economic dislocation. The sort of authoritarian regimes that would be ushered in by this nightmare scenario are incalculable. The results could indeed lead to some sort of global conflict.

I wish we were all wrong about this.