Eighty years ago this month, on November 15, 1923, the Great German Inflation came to an end when the monetary printing presses were finally shut down. The German people had gone through nine years of ever-greater monetary expansion, ever-more soaring prices, the financial destruction of much of the society's middle class, a massive misdirection and squandering of the country's productive capital in an illusionary economic boom, and the ruin of much of Germany's social fabric. The inflationary madness ended in a virtual total collapse of the German mark.
The German inflation began-as many other inflations have begun throughout history-through the government's turning to the printing press ...