Quantitative Easing Did Not Work For The Weimar Republic Either

The economic collapse blog ^ | unknown | The economic collapse blog

[fifthvirginia]

Did printing vast quantities of money work for the Weimar Republic? Nope. And it won't work for us either.

[fifthvirginia]

Some interesting comments too

[TexasRepublic]

Who wants to be a trillionaire?

[Bon mots]

This has never worked, but has been done time and time again throughout history.

Politically speaking, it is in fact, the ONLY solution and thus we will repeat this grave error once again.

There is a very good book on the subject written by Reinhardt and Rogoff (of Harvard):

This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

The book was written as a sort of historical treatise on how the same economic folly repeats itself over and over again.
The subtitle of the book is illuminating: "Eight Centuries of Financial Folly"

This book was referred to in Michael Lewis's Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, where the author put together Kyle Bass and Kenneth Rogoff - Rogoff was shocked to find out that the conditions he described in his book in a historical context, actually exist in the world today.

[DuncanWaring]

Of course it will work here.

Everyone knows that.

This time it's different.

</rolling eyes>

[Venturer]

Obama knows it won’t work, It’s all part of his Cloward-Piven plan.

[LostPassword]

define “work”. I’m pretty sure Obama and I have different definitions.

[mo]

I’d say it worked out pretty well for the Nazi’s....who never would have come to power without it!!

Honestly...people cannot even comprehend what is transpiring before their very eyes..

http://www.teaparty.org/article.php?id=186

This is PRECISELY how the German’s started down their path to hell on earth......it started with “partial birth abortion”-infantacide of the weakest and most dependent...next the elderly chronically ill and dependent who “consume their unfair quantity of health care” ...etc...etc...

We the People..that fail to resist will have just as much “splainin’ to do ...

[skinkinthegrass]

!

[rawcatslyentist]

>"Who wants to be a trillionaire?"

Ya hadda axe!

Apparently Zimbabweans do.

Their money is worth more on Ebay as a novelty than in spending power.

Starting to look like Wacky Bernacky money!

[joe fonebone]

QE was not designed nor used to get us out of a recession..

It is used to prevent DEPRESSION..

This was one of the largest mistakes of the great depression..

not expanding the money supply, but instead shrinking it, to the point that there was not enough physical cash in circulation...

Why do you think banks could not pay depositors?

If you compare the time today to the days prior to the great depression, I would put us at spring 1928..

QE does not worry me, it is the upcoming contraction that worries me. If it is done too quickly, we will crash and move into depression.

Stop worrying about QE, and start paying attention and looking for the contraction.

[fireman15]

German kids playing with worthless money:

[DuncanWaring]

Why do you think banks could not pay depositors?

Banks couldn't pay depositors because they had loaned-out much of the depositors' money ... which is a primary function of banks.

Ten people come in and each deposit $1000.

Bank loans out $9000.

Two people come back and want their $1000.

Someone's screwed.

Now, the Benbernank is printing a half-trillion per year forever, and we're all screwed.

[ctdonath2]

At least the worthless money was worth playing with in the form of toy blocks.
Our soon-worthless currency is just digital IOUs. Can’t withdraw a pile of it and let the kids play with it or sell it on eBay as a novelty.

[Iron Munro]

2016:

"Honey, take a couple of Obamas from the cookie jar and get a loaf of bread on your way home."

[ctdonath2]

On a related note:

[Don Corleone]

Things got soooo bad in Hitler’s Germany that they were overprinting stamps with higher values because runaway inflation made the current values obsolete and it was just cheaper to overprint a new value. We basically are doing the same thing with the “Forever” stamps. National Socialism by any name still is Marxism by the drink.

[Uncle Miltie]

Because it worked so well the first, second, third and fourth times:

[KarlInOhio]

If you anticipate a period of hyperinflation, the best thing you can do is buy as much real estate as possible with a fixed, long term interest rate. If you can barely afford to make the payments even at 3.5% you've probably got the right about to become rich after hyperinflation washes away your debts.....

except for one little thing. Obama has shown a contempt for the rule of law and the idea of contracts. So imagine if you have an iron clad mortgage contract for $500,000 at 3.5% and the federales come through and "revalue" the mortgage to say that you now owe $500,000,000 at 20%. After all, it wouldn't be faaaaaaaaair to allow you to profit at the expense of the banks, federal loan guarantee organizations (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and who knows what else), FDIC and whatever other federal programs sprout up to try to control inflation.

Maybe if we just have a few years of 1970s style bad inflation rather than going full Zimbabwe the mortgagors might be able to stay under the federal radar, but I wouldn't bet that you would be able to keep your mortgage contract as-is if inflation is bad enough so that postage for the mortgage payment costs more than the payment itself.

[zeugma]

The above is a 50,000,000 mark note printed in 1923. I purchased it about 20 years ago, as a tangible reminder of where I thought we were heading. We'll see similar bills here some day.