Effects of War and Hyperinflation On Wealth and Commerce
Hyperinflation, wars and revolutions cause hording of essentials and a disruption of markets. In some past hyperinflations, workers were paid daily and immediately spent their earnings on essential goods, which they often used for barter. Store shelves were frequently empty.
More stable foreign currencies, silver and gold (usually coins) were held and exchanged in place of local currency. The minting country of precious metal coins tended to be relatively unimportant. Jewelry was also used as a medium of exchange. Alcoholic beverages were also used for barter.
Desperate individuals sold valuable possessions to buy essentials or traded them for gold and silver.
In the German hyperinflation stocks held much more of their value than paper currency. Bonds denominated in the inflating currency may lose most or all value.
Read more about this topic: Economic Collapse
Famous quotes containing the words effects of, effects, war, wealth and/or commerce:
“Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Oh that my Pow’r to Saving were confin’d:
Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Of course in war all madnesses come out in a man, that is the fault of war not of a man or a nation.”
—Frieda Lawrence (1879–1956)
“That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“I leave you, home,
when I’m ripped from the doorstep
by commerce or fate. Then I submit
to the awful subway of the world....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)