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:
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider’d as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from cause to effects and effects to causes, according to their experienc’d union.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“Were it good
To set the exact wealth of all our states
All at one cast? to set so rich a main
On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?
It were not good.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)