Unit 2 · Level 1 · Inflation
When money dies
Germany 1923: workers paid twice a day, spending wages before evening because prices doubled within days. Zimbabwe 2008: a 100-trillion-dollar banknote that couldn't buy bread. Venezuela 2018: inflation estimated at over 1,000,000%. Hyperinflation is rare, but it's the same disease every time.
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What you get asked
Match each episode to its claim to fame.
Different continents, different decades, one script: a government funding itself with the printing press.
What is the honest common cause behind history's hyperinflations?
Shopkeepers and speculators get the blame in speeches, but every major hyperinflation traces back to a state paying its bills with newly created money.
In Weimar Germany in 1923, prices could double every few ___.
At the peak, cash lost value between breakfast and dinner. That is why workers demanded wages twice a day.
Order the death spiral of a currency.
The final stage is the tell: when citizens price things in a foreign currency, the shared story of the local money has died.
Economists' classic threshold for 'hyperinflation' is inflation above…
50% per MONTH: over 100x prices in a year. Europe's painful 10% in 2022 was a different universe from true hyperinflation. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Why prices rise, who wins, who pays, and what happens when money dies.