Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers who Broke the World

by Liaquat Ahamed

Show me a hero49 and I will write you a tragedy.

By August 1923, a dollar was worth 620,000 marks and by early November 1923, 630 billion.fn5 Basic necessities169 were now priced in the billions—a kilo of butter cost 250 billion; a kilo of bacon 180 billion; a simple ride on a Berlin street car, which had cost 1 mark before the war, was now set at 15 billion. Even though currency notes were available in denominations of up to 100 billion marks, it took whole sheaves to pay for anything. The country was awash with currency notes, carried around in bags, in wheelbarrows, in laundry baskets and hampers, even in baby carriages.

He had consulted Maynard Keynes, who counseled him to hold out, arguing that Britain should refuse the American offer “in order to give them205 [the Americans] time to discover that they are just as completely at our mercy as we are at France’s and France at Germany’s. It is the debtor who has the last word in these cases.”