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Eh my understanding was more that they had to cover fiscal deficits with printing, because they had heavy WW1 war reps (only payable in gold, so they couldn’t i
by ericd 11mo ago
Eh my understanding was more that they had to cover fiscal deficits with printing, because they had heavy WW1 war reps (only payable in gold, so they couldn’t inflate it away).
There are times when it’s politically infeasible to defend the currency, even if they technically could. See the response in France to trying to raise the retirement age a bit, because their budget is in trouble.
- wqaatwt 11mo agoSupposedly Germany was spending around 80% of its tax revenue on interest payments alone. They pretty much had to finance the war through domestic bonds. So yes, pretty they didn’t have any money to spend on anything else. Of course bonds became worthless well before the peak in inflation.
- ericd 11mo agoEesh thanks for that detail, didn’t realize it was so crushingly high.