Lessons of the Weimar Republic: the history of Weimar Germany illustrates how the social, political, and cultural destruction caused by hyperinflation so easily leads to the loss of liberty.(HISTORY--PAST AND PERSPECTIVE)

In the wake of President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget and a series of bank and industry bailouts by the Federal Reserve, the specter of hyperinflation haunts the United States. There are plenty of historical examples of what hyperinflation can do to an economy. One need not necessarily look to 1920s Weimar Germany for an example; present-day Zimbabwe provides the most recent version of the economic wreckage caused by government planning that devalues a national currency. But Weimar Germany is instructive in that it illustrates the social, political, and cultural destruction caused by hyperinflation that leads to the loss of liberty; for it was Weimar Republic Germany that ...