Not Worth The Paper

In Germany, after the First World War, the government printed money frantically as the mark's value plunged. Wheelbarrow loads of paper notes were needed to buy bread and other household goods. In 1921, the German rate of exchange was 81 marks to one American dollar. By July 1923, a dollar was worth a million German marks. The world's worst inflation happened in Hungary in 1946. Hungary, like many other countries, had gone off the Gold Standard in 1931. By June 1946, one 1931 gold pengö was worth 130 million million million paper pengös, and prices in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, were being raised as often as ten times a day. The pengö was later replaced as a unit of currency by the present forint, and by 1980, inflation was down to a modest 4 per cent a year.