The direct cause of inflation is that the amount of money circulating in a country is greater than its effective economic aggregate, which leads to the devaluation of the country's currency and the rise of prices. Under normal circumstances, inflation is produced by triggering a large number of currencies to curb economic recession during the economic downturn. In fact, inflation has always existed, but it is vicious and benign. In fact, inflation has always existed in our daily economic life, but inflation is divided into malignant and benign.
Inflation usually recorded in history is hyperinflation. As the saying goes, "good things don't go out, bad things spread thousands of miles"-people are different in their sensitivity to good things and bad things: they will take it for granted when they encounter good things, and they will feel particularly abnormal when they encounter bad things. Benign inflation has always existed in daily economic life, and there is nothing worth writing about. Only those hyperinflation that bring disasters to people's lives will be recorded in detail, because people hope to sum up the experience and lessons of how to avoid the recurrence of tragedies.
There were three times of inflation that attracted worldwide attention in the 20th century. The economic losses directly caused by these three inflations are almost equal, and these three inflations have also caused quite serious social problems. The inflation that attracted worldwide attention in the 20th century occurred in Germany after World War I. World War I caused Germany to lose about 10% of its population, nearly 1/7 of its land (excluding colonies) and half of its steel industry. The Saar coal mining area, which is vital to German industry, was also entrusted to the League of Nations by 15 (actually occupied by France).
The loss of a large number of territory, population and industrial resources has made Germany's post-war economic recovery difficult, and Germany, as a defeated country, is also under heavy compensation pressure. According to the negotiation results between Britain, France, the United States and Italy in April 192 1, Germany needs to pay13.2 billion gold marks to the victorious country, and pay interest in 30 years. Weimar Republic, established after World War I, was unable to pay huge reparations to the allies. In desperation, we have to make up the difference between expenditure and tax by selling bonds to German banks.
However, this practice of quenching thirst by drinking poison also laid the groundwork for future inflation. 1922 Germany has repeatedly requested to postpone the payment of compensation. The French side not only rejected Germany's request to postpone the payment of compensation, but also joined forces with Belgium to send troops to occupy the Ruhr area. Weimar called on Ruhr residents to "passively resist" the French occupation policy. At that time, Weimar used 50 million dollars worth of gold reserves to support the shutdown in Ruhr, but it also caused heavy losses to the German economy.
Mark's value began to drop by a thousand miles a day. After April 1923, Germany basically gave up any idea of interfering with Mark. At that time, more than 300 paper mills and more than 20 printing houses in Germany provided the banks with the needed banknotes 24 hours a day. At the height of inflation, bread money in the morning can't even afford bread crumbs at night. Inflation in Germany reached its peak in 1923: a sign in front of a bakery in Berlin clearly stated that "a loaf of bread needs one trillion marks". Numbers have lost their original meaning at this time.
German people no longer need to burn wood to keep warm. Instead, they burned mountains of signs. German children gradually began to play with banknotes, because toys made of banknotes are much cheaper than buying toys with banknotes. At 192 1, a loaf of bread is worth about 10 to 20 marks in Germany. By 1922, the price of bread rose to DM 200, and by the second half of 1923, it rose to DM 20 million. At the beginning of 1923, 1 mark can be exchanged for $2, and by the end of 1923, it will take about 650 million marks to exchange 1 dollar.
192365438+February financial genius schacht was appointed as the president of Deutsche Bank. Immediately after taking office, schacht went hand in hand from two aspects: seeking the support of foreign financial capital while carrying out monetary reform. Schacht realized that Mark had lost trust, so everyone refused to accept Mark, so he had to reissue the currency. Schacht replaced the old signs of extremely rubbish with the signs of state-owned land and house mortgage. This means that new signs can be exchanged for land or houses in a certain proportion. In this way, people gradually exchanged gold and dollars for new marks.
The Bundesbank will use these gold and foreign exchange as collateral to issue more new marks. What was the ratio of the old bid to the new bid? 1 trillion: 1. This means that it takes 1 trillion old marks to change to 1 mark. We can also see the severity of inflation in Germany at that time. While carrying out currency reform, schacht held consultations with the United States, Britain, France and other countries on the issue of World War I reparations. The United States believes that in order to obtain war reparations from Germany, we must first ensure that the German economy will not suffer losses, otherwise the Germans will not be able to survive themselves. How can we pay reparations to the victorious country?
1924 The Dawes Plan issued by the United States tried to ensure that Germany paid reparations by restoring the German economy. The main content of "Dawes Plan" is to reorganize Deutsche Bank under the supervision of allies, and the allies will lend 800 million goldmark (equivalent to 65.438+0.9 billion US dollars) to Germany to stabilize the currency. The implementation of Dawes Plan played an important role in the recovery and development of German economy in the second half of the 1920s. Dawes Plan created conditions for private capital from the United States, Britain and other countries to flow into Germany, and effectively recovered war debts from allies.
After the implementation of the plan, the problem of capital shortage in Germany was solved, and Germany also received a lot of material and technical help from the United States. Since then, batches of dollars have flowed from the United States into Germany, then into the Allies in the form of reparations, and finally back to the United States in the form of war debts, thus forming a cycle. Schacht took this opportunity to exchange new marks for old ones based on the bank's gold reserves, with a disparity ratio of 1 to 3 billion. By August 1924, this process was basically completed. Therefore, the exchange rate of the mark remains stable in the international market.
The long-term inflation that has plagued Germany seems to be over, but it is only a superficial end. Germany mortgaged a large number of state-owned land and houses to solve the inflation problem. In this way, Germany and Germany were still very poor at that time, because almost everything of value was mortgaged. From 65438 to 0929, the worldwide Great Depression began to spread rapidly from new york stock market to the whole world. Germany's economy relies heavily on the United States to get out of the predicament of inflation, so the Great Depression, which originated in the United States, also caused heavy losses to Germany.
On the one hand, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany went bankrupt, resulting in large-scale unemployment; On the other hand, monopoly oligarchs have appeared in several major industries such as electricity, steel and chemical industry where American capital is concentrated. At this time, the greater desire of Germans is to get rid of the economic crisis and improve domestic living conditions; Release the bondage of Versailles system to the outside world, thus enhancing Germany's position in the international community. It is against this background that the Nazi Party led by Hitler vigorously advocated racism-attracting people's attention by calling for breaking the shackles of the Versailles system, developing the national economy and improving people's livelihood.
In the general election of 1928, the Nazi party led by Hitler was only 2.6%. However, in September of 1930, the Nazi Party became the second largest party in parliament with the support rate of 18.3%. The Nazi Party won 37.2% of the votes and 230 seats in July 1932, and became one of the main political parties in Parliament. In this year, Hitler became the German Chancellor, and a year later, President Hindenburg died, and Hitler became the supreme head of Germany. After Hitler came to power, he promoted a series of actions to expand the army and prepare for war, making Germany the European source of World War II.
Although China was the first country to issue paper money in the world, after the Song Dynasty, paper money went hand in hand with metal money in China. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the main currencies in circulation in the market were still silver, copper coins and other metal currencies. Even in the Republic of China, silver dollars and oceans were still the main currencies in circulation in society. 1935, the people decided to reform the monetary system: abandon the silver standard and start issuing paper money-legal tender. At the beginning, it issued 450 million yuan of legal tender. At first, the legal tender was pegged to the US dollar: 1 yuan legal tender was about 0.2975 US dollars.
1937 after the full-scale outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, people need a lot of military spending. In the early days of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the people were defeated at the front, and at the same time, the finance was gradually unable to support the expenses needed for the war. There are two main ways for citizens to solve financial problems: one is to start levying exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous fees on various new projects, and the other is to print money for themselves by increasing the circulation of legal tender. Doing so actually devalues the money in the hands of ordinary people, thus virtually robbing the money in the hands of ordinary people.
During the Anti-Japanese War, the currency issued by the people exceeded the market demand by hundreds of times, and as a result, the wartime price in Chongqing rose to 1700 times before the war. In other words, in less than 10 years, the house price in Chongqing has increased by more than 1000 times. Money for buying a car before the war can only buy two eggs at this time. By the end of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the total amount of legal tender issued exceeded 500 billion, which was about 1000 times higher than that in 1935 and about 400 times higher than that in 1937. 1June, 946, the authorities flagrantly launched a civil war. At this time, one yuan of legal tender is about 0.0005 US dollars.
The people of China paid a heavy price for winning the victory in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression: at least 35 million soldiers and civilians were killed or injured, with direct property loss of 31300 million dollars and indirect property loss of 20.4 billion dollars. This is only the loss caused by the Japanese war of aggression against China, not including China's military expenditure in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. After such a hard battle, everything was in ruins, but the authorities brazenly launched a civil war regardless of the objective needs of the people to recuperate. War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression has just finished, and there is a civil war, with a heavy economic burden.
In order to solve the financial problem, the authorities once again resorted to the tactics of spamming money. Since 1947, the authorities have printed trillions of banknotes every month: 1000 yuan, 5,000 yuan and 10000 yuan have appeared in the market one after another. After 1947 and 10, the national market began to reject small bills below 500 yuan. Some citizens can only exchange vegetables with farmers at the price of a pound of paper money for a pound of vegetables, but soon the fiat currency out of control will depreciate to the point where even farmers will not accept it.
1948 the civil war has entered a turning point: leading the people, with the support of the masses, winning battles in succession, and the army needs more supplies after losing on the battlefield. As a result, the government's printing money reached the craziest state: by August 1948, the price index in Shanghai had reached 57 10000 times that before the civil war (the inflation rate was as high as 57 100000%)! 1948 banknotes have reached the point where a sack of banknotes can't buy a catty of rice. At that time, people went shopping with a sack of money.
China's price history once recorded the items that could be bought at 100 yuan in different periods of the Republic of China: 1937 to buy two cows, 1939 to buy a cow,194/kloc-0 to buy a pig, 1943 to buy a hen, 60. The devaluation of legal tender is actually a double-edged sword for the people: although people make up their economic burden in this way, the social problems caused by it also make people lose their hearts. Of course, there is no one who doesn't know this problem.
1948 The political meeting held on August 9, 2009/kloc-0 adopted the monetary reform plan proposed by Weng Hewang. That night, Chiang Kai-shek issued a "financial emergency order" in the name of the president: private holders of gold and silver foreign exchange were limited to be converted into gold certificates before September 30; In August, national prices were frozen at the level of 19. Then people began to issue a new currency-golden certificates. At that time, 1 gold certificates were exchanged for 3 million French francs. However, the people have returned to the old road: the printing speed of gold certificates is even faster than that of legal tender before.
In fact, the certificate of changing legal tender into gold is just another medicine: it seems to be a new currency, but there are more and more spamming behaviors. Changing legal tender into gold certificates cannot fundamentally solve the inflation problem. Although Chiang Kai-shek explicitly prohibited private holding of gold, silver and foreign exchange, he also prohibited hoarding and driving up prices. Jiang Jingguo even went to Shanghai for economic control. However, when Jiang Jingguo investigated speculators and profiteers in Shanghai, he directly pointed the finger at Kong Lingkan, the son of Kong Xiangxi.
Jiang, Song, Kong and Chen have always been proud of each other. With the intervention of Song Meiling, Jiang Jingguo's campaign to kill tigers in Shanghai ended in vain. It is impossible to break through the shackles of internal vested interest groups, so it is impossible to fundamentally solve the inflation problem. The gold certificate soon depreciated into a pile of waste paper like the previous legal tender. By the second half of 1949, 5 million gold coupons will be equal to the newly issued 1 yuan gold coupons. At this time, a stone of rice costs 440 million yuan and a baked wheat cake costs 5000 yuan.
The regime finally failed to solve the problem of inflation. After the founding of New China, RMB was issued nationwide. If the monetary policy of New China made China's economy realize from chaos to governance, then Zimbabwe, located in southern Africa, experienced the process from governance to chaos. Zimbabwe is somewhat similar to South Africa: Zimbabwe implemented a strict apartheid policy during the colonial rule. The white colonists who ruled Zimbabwe also gave the region a European name "southern rhodesia".
From 65438 to 0964, the white right-wing forces in southern rhodesia were composed of iain smith. 1965165438+10 iain smith declared "independence" with the support of Britain and the United States. At this point, southern rhodesia, like South Africa, gained nominal independence. However, after independence, it was still in the hands of white colonists. 1979 September10-1February 15 southern rhodesia's whites and Mugabe's patriotic front held a meeting at Lancaster Palace in London under the mediation of former sovereign country Britain.
At this meeting, the two sides reached a Lancaster agreement: land reform and land distribution will not be carried out in the next ten years, and the land possession of white farmers will remain unchanged. 1In February 1980, the Patriotic Front led by Mugabe won the general election. On April 8th of the same year, 18, the country name "southern rhodesia" adopted by the colonists was abolished, and "Zimbabwe" became the new name of this place. This symbol marks a new page in Zimbabwe's history. When the black people led by Mugabe came to power, Zimbabwe was the second richest country in Africa after South Africa.
Zimbabwe has not only achieved food self-sufficiency, but also earned a lot of foreign exchange by exporting food abroad. Zimbabwe is therefore called the "vegetable basket" of Africa and suffers from hunger on the African continent. In the early days of the founding of Zimbabwe, Mugabe adopted a policy of "reconciliation and coordination" when dealing with ethnic relations: he said that "racism will never be reversed" and "whites are welcome to stay and build a new one together". Mugabe held high the banner of "opposing tribalism" and "opposing localism" and called on the general public to put interests first and oppose splitting the regime.
Mugabe kept a 10-year agreement with whites: White Prime Minister Smith kept his farm while continuing to enjoy Zimbabwe's pension. Many white people who fled Zimbabwe for fear of persecution returned to Zimbabwe. British companies continue to invest in Zimbabwe, and international institutions such as the World Bank continue to provide assistance to Zimbabwe. In the first two decades of Mugabe's reign, Zimbabwe was like a paradise on the African continent tortured by hunger and war.
While other African countries don't even have enough to eat, Zimbabwe has a lot of food to export. While other African countries were still fighting civil wars, Zimbabwe achieved national reconciliation. During this period, Zimbabwe, as the richest country in Africa after South Africa, has made steady progress in all its undertakings. During the white colonial period, almost all blacks did not go to school. The literacy campaign launched by Mugabe after he took office made Zimbabwe's literacy rate reach 64%. This is not high in our view, but it is already at the leading level in Africa. The HIV-carrying rate in Zimbabwe once reached 3 1%.
In Mugabe's era, by controlling mother-to-child transmission and promoting condoms, the HIV-carrying rate in Zimbabwe was successfully reduced to 20%. If Zimbabwe continues this trend, it may become a developed country that stands out from the crowd in Africa plagued by poverty, hunger, war and disease. However, the development of Zimbabwe ushered in a turning point at the end of the 20th century: during this period, the new relationship between Zimbabwe and Britain deteriorated, and the financial crisis triggered by sending troops to Congo (DRC) led to a domestic counter-wave.
In order to maintain his ruling position, Mugabe accelerated the process of land reform after the parliamentary election in 2000: forcibly recovering the land of white farmers. Because Mugabe promised to keep the land of white farmers when he came to power, the unfair land distribution during the colonial period remained intact. At that time, nearly half of Zimbabwe's arable land was concentrated in the hands of 6,000 white farmers, while more than 7 million black residents were landless or less. After speeding up the process of land reform in Zimbabwe, land resources have been redistributed.
However, the lack of effective management policies in this process has led to serious corruption, and at the same time there have been chaos such as violent expulsion of white farmers. Zimbabwe's hard-won national reconciliation has thus been undermined again. With the acceleration of land reform, white farmers have fled Zimbabwe. These people left Zimbabwe with advanced agricultural technology and farming equipment. After all this, Zimbabwe, a rare food exporter in Africa, experienced a sharp decline in food production.
In this case, Zimbabwe has adopted the strategy of issuing paper money indiscriminately to quench its thirst. If you earn 1980 Zimbabwe now and then change these Zimbabwean coins into US dollars, you can get14.7 billion US dollars. But instead of converting your money into dollars, you put it in a local bank, so by 200 1 year, the money you take out can only be converted into 1 billion dollars. You can buy a chicken in the morning and not even an egg at night.
Hyperinflation has made Zimbabwe nicknamed "the poor with only money". Zimbabwe has issued10000000000000000000000000000000000000-000000-0000000-000000000000000000000000000000000 bills in the history of mankind: Zimbabwe is full of millionaires, but even if you buy breakfast, you have to carry a sack of money, which may not be as valuable as a sack the next day. With millions of bills in my pocket, I can't afford anything. From 2000 to 2008, Zimbabwe's economy shrank by more than one third and the unemployment rate exceeded 80%. As of September 30, 2022, Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate has exceeded 350%.
After March 2008, Zimbabwe's economic situation deteriorated to a climax: key departments such as finance, finance and taxation basically stopped operating, and social public management functions such as hydropower, communications, medical care and education were almost paralyzed. At one time, 5.5 million people in rural areas of Zimbabwe faced food shortages, and about 2.2 million people in urban areas could not get food security. Zimbabwe has become almost the poorest country in the world from Africa. After 2009, Zimbabwe had to replace its currency with US dollars and South African rand.
In 2022, the RMB also became one of the legal tender in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has also implemented a series of reforms at home: vigorously introducing foreign capital and revitalizing domestic mineral resources. After that, the economic situation in Zimbabwe improved, but this did not fundamentally solve the problem. Due to the long-term lack of foreign exchange reserves and bank control, Zimbabwe's hyperinflation did not completely end with the abandonment of its own currency, but triggered a "hoarding tide" among Zimbabweans: people began to hoard anything they thought was valuable, such as cars, real estate and stocks.
In addition to the three serious inflation in the 20th century, there is still a vortex of inflation. Venezuela in South America is as rich in oil resources as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar in the Middle East. In 2000, Venezuela accounted for about 4% of the world oil reserves, ranking first in South America and fifth in the world. With the discovery of new oil resources in Orinoco heavy crude oil belt, Venezuela's oil reserves increased by 4 1%, reaching 297 billion barrels, nearly 30 billion barrels more than Saudi Arabia, making it a potential oil resource reserve in the world.
Venezuela in Chavez era supported a set of high welfare policies with the income from oil exports: free housing, universal medical care, cheap food, free childbirth, free education and free medical care in Venezuela. Almost all the welfare policies in Northern Europe have been directly copied by Venezuela, but it has never been considered that this is far beyond Venezuela's financial capacity. So in Venezuela, there is such a scene: pregnant women line up at the door of the delivery room, because the so-called free medical care is at the expense of bed insertion.
Children actually have no place to study, because free education comes at the expense of cutting school construction funds. In this way, the school has become a dangerous building. Who dares to attend class? No one cares about sending emergency patients to the hospital, because the number of medical teams has also decreased, and the delay in maintaining and updating medical equipment can not only save lives, but also become a murder weapon with frequent accidents. At first, the problems in Venezuela's system were not very prominent, mainly because Venezuela was rich in oil resources.
However, Venezuela's economic structure is quite simple. Venezuela, which has not established a complete industrial system, relies almost entirely on oil exports to earn foreign exchange: oil revenue accounts for 95% of its total exports. This development model was no problem when the oil price was high, but after the oil price began to fall in the second half of 2022, the problem appeared: the income dropped sharply. In order to make up the fiscal deficit, Venezuela came up with a brilliant idea to issue more paper money, so the national printing house worked overtime to print paper money, and as a result, hyperinflation inevitably came to this head.
When the domestic finance was unsustainable, Chavez chose to use foreign exchange reserves to ease it. However, the result of this is tantamount to quenching thirst by drinking poison. In the end, Venezuela had to borrow foreign debt to make a living, and the borrowed foreign debt and its interest became a huge stone in Venezuela's finance. Finally, corruption in Venezuela further deepens the loss of wealth: senior officials open private accounts overseas and transfer state-owned assets belonging to all Venezuelan nationals to their own accounts.
This not only caused Venezuela to lose a lot of wealth, but also hit the working people at the bottom, thus hindering the improvement of production efficiency. Since 20 13, supermarkets in Venezuela often face the dilemma of out of stock, and Venezuelans are gradually accustomed to queuing to buy daily necessities. At first, Chavez changed the name of Venezuela's currency to Bolivarian in order to emphasize the political color of his Bolivarian, but the liberator printed on Venezuelan paper money did not become the patron saint of Venezuela's economy.
With the inflation rate as high as 700% in Venezuela, the larger face value of 100 bolivar is only worth 2 cents. Today's Bolivar has depreciated to the same value as the previous gold certificates and Zimbabwe coins. The turmoil in Venezuela's economy and people's livelihood has also spread to the political field and continues to this day. American forces also took advantage of the domestic turmoil in Venezuela to make a comeback: Guaido, leader of the opposition party and speaker of parliament in Venezuela, claimed to be interim president, and the United States-led West immediately supported Guaido and imposed sanctions on Venezuela.
The above is about several disasters in Ma's 66-year life, and it is about the sharing of the people. After reading 1966, Ma 2022 is the most dangerous month. I hope this will help everyone!