It’s the stuff of childhood fantasy—printing as much money as you need to buy whatever your heart desires. Unfortunately, real world economics are more complex than daydreams of wealth. When the supply of money drastically expands, the value of the currency plummets. Banks shutter their windows. Life savings vanish overnight. Fixed incomes become meaningless. Even transporting money becomes an arduous process. This horrible economic death spiral is called hyperinflation, defined as a monthly rate of inflation in excess of 50 percent. This is a chaotic period of economic upheaval, when fixed incomes become worthless, when wheelbarrows are required to transport paper money to the market for simple transactions, when restaurants
write menu prices in pencil because they change every hour.
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These notes are from the nine top countries on the Hanke-Krus Hyperinflation Table: