Turning Hard Times Into Good Times

John Rubino, Michael Oliver and Patrick Highsmith return. Almost alone among the world’s serious nations, Germany has scenes like this within living memory: During the 1923 Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation, newly-destitute Germans burned their life savings to keep warm or carted wheelbarrows of cash to stores to buy bread and milk. This wipe-out of an entire generation’s wealth led directly to Hitler and WWII, arguably the two dumbest mistakes made by any country ever. Note how in the recent past, before the Deutsche Bundesbank was replaced by the European Central Bank, short-term German interest rates were always set above the inflation rate in order to keep prices under control. Those days are over. Since the Great Recession, German interest rates have been consistently below the rate of inflation, apparently to encourage even faster price increases. So the question becomes: how much more of this can Germany take before it breaks from the Eurozone and starts trying to save itself? Or, will it simply go alon