LIBERTY DOLLAR NEWS: February 2010 Vol. 12 No. 02 "How it Happens"
Ever wonder how hyperinflation happens on a day-by-day basis. How it impacts people's lives and how they cope with it? Well, in chapter three of my first book, Your Survival Currency, I quoted Pearl S. Buck, who lived most of her life in rural China with her missionary parents in the 1920s and 30s. She wrote terrific books that inspired may young women and became the first American woman to win a Noble Prize for literature. In an often forgotten book, How It Happens (New York, John Day, 1947) Ms. Buck interviews Erna von Pustau, a German housewife who describes her real life experiences in Germany during hyperinflation. Buck quotes Erna von Pustau: "By the end of the year my allowance and all the money I earned was not worth one cup of coffee. You could go to the baker in the morning and buy two rolls for 20 marks; but go there in the afternoon, and the same two rolls were 25 marks. The baker didn't know how it happened. His customers didn't know how it happened. It had somehow to do with the dollar, somehow to do with the stock exchange--and somehow, maybe, to do with the Jews." My book continues with: "Eventually, a loaf of bread cost billions of marks. Suicide was common. Women who a few years before would have thought such a thing unthinkable became prostitutes. Frau von Pustau says that Germans crazy with hunger butchered chunks of meat from the flanks of wagon horses standing in the traces. They either sold the meat or ate it on the spot." Well with such shocking insights supplied to me by literary researcher, Alan Stang and accredited to such a literary figure as Ms. Buck, I always wanted to read her book. For years I tried to find a copy. And finally, after searching for ten years, I happen to find How It Happens on Amazon! And even though it was well $100, I was thrilled to finally score such an unusual book. Then I was equally shocked to discover that Ms. Buck did not mention the cost of bread, prostitution or that "Germans crazy with hunger butchered chunks of meat from the flanks of wagon horses standing in the traces." I also learned the remark regarding Jews in 1923 was the first instance of propaganda by the National Socialist Party, aka Nazi. Another insight into every day life during hyperinflation in pre WWII Germany was reported in TV Guide (August 10, 1974). The story is of the great pianist Arthur Schnabel, who gave a Beethoven recital in Berlin in 1923. He was paid with a suitcase stuffed with thousand-mark notes. Schnabel recalled, "I had to ask a man to help me carry my fee home. On my way home, I passed a delicatessen and to relieve my helper, I spent half my fee on a couple of sausages. The next day I saw in the paper that I could not even get one sausage for the other half of my fee." Get ready, we are all headed down hill. "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value --- zero." Voltaire (1694-1778)
