<DIV><p>&#160;</p> <DIV><i>When Money Dies</i> is the classic history of what happens when a nation&rsquo;s currency depreciates beyond recovery.&#160;In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy.&#160;Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved.&#160;Germany&rsquo;s finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake.</div> <DIV>Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923.&#160;However, &ldquo;quantitative easing,&rdquo; that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline.&#160;Whatever the reason for a country&rsquo;s deficit&mdash;necessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditure&mdash;it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession.&#160;What if it does not?&#160;Germany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.</div> <DIV>&#160;</div> <p>&ldquo;Engrossing and sobering.&rdquo; &mdash;<i>Daily Express</i> (London)</p></DIV>