When Money Dies

When Money Dies is the title of an interesting book written by Adam Fergusson, first published in 1975 and re-printed in 2010. It is about the nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-inflation episode, where money for a short period basically died out and got replaced with barter.

Money follow cycles like many other things: birth, young age, midlife, midlife crisis, old age, possibly followed by hart attack (basically overnight dramatic devaluation), cancer (hyper inflation), death, and finally re-birth (in form of somewhat “new” monetary system.

Greenspan supposedly in 2002 said: “If the evident recent success of fiat money regimes falters, we may have to go back to seashells or oxen as our medium of exchange. In that unlikely event, I trust, the discount window of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will have an adequate inventory of oxen.”