Have you experienced hyper-inflation?

[Jamie (K)]

There is an interesting German novel, called The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque, that tells about life in Germany during hyper-inflation before World War II. It shows lots of situations that are very surprising to a North American or a West European who was born in the time after the war.

In one situation, two men are screaming at their company's salesman because he won't stop selling things for money. This money loses half its value by the time the customer pays, and the company takes a loss. However, the salesman refuses to stop, because he is proud of his professional skills.

In another one, a man needed a tie, but he had to go out and buy it before lunch time, because in a few hours, his week's salary wouldn't be enough to pay for the tie.

In still another situation, some men really dislike a certain restaurant owner -- plus, they want to save money -- so they buy up a lot of the coupon booklets that the restauranteur sold before the inflation started. After a few weeks, the restaurant begins losing money on their meals, and after a few months, just one of these coupons destroys the man's income for the whole day. The restaurant owner tried telling the men that he would no longer accept the coupons, so the next day they invited their lawyer to lunch, and the owner had to continue honoring the coupons.

Have you ever lived in hyper-inflation, and do you have any stories to tell about it?

[Torsten]

I don't think that in the EU we will be experiencing any signs of hyper-inflation.

TOEIC listening, photographs: Fishing

[Foah]

Once I spent my holidays in the former Jugoslavia. It was somewhat 25 years ago. Usually, when you went abroad to spend your holidays there you exchanged the amount of money you expected to need for food and drinks and souvenirs and so on. But before my girl-frined and I went there we were warned not to exchange all the money but a part of it only. So we followed that good advice and exchanged just 30 D-Mark to 8,000 dinar at our native bank the day before our flight. Immediately after we arrived at the Hotel-reception an advise board showed the current exchange course 44,000 Dinar for 100 D-Mark. It´s been the offical course. Privat persons who were keen on German money even offered 45,000 Dinar. While our 3 weeks stay there the offical course changed up to 49,000 Dinar and privat persons offered aleready about 50,000 Dinar.
Almost every day the prices on menus raised and souvenirs got more expensive almost every day.
I must say it was hard to understand for us. But such enormous speed in decrease as in Remarques novell is much less understandable to me.

Michael
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"Ho ho!" said the clown