Paper Money

Look at the below image,look at the kids,look at them playing ,but try to look bit closer to notice what are they playing with.....

yeap,thats right, its a picture of kids in Germany during the 20's playing with stacks of money

Never knew that was possible,right? It is,and the cause for this is hyperinflation and thats exactly what caused the German bank notes to be so worthless that the paper it was printed on became more expensive than the money itself.


I myself dont know much about hyperinflation but the terms would generally means inflation at a hyper rate.Let me back it up a little bit for those who dont know what inflation means.


Inflation is just the level of change in the value of money, lets say,for example, an apple in 2010 would have cost 95cents and today a dollar.So,it goes to say that the level of increase in price is inflation.

To calculate:


(1.00-0.95/1.00) X 100% = 5%


Meaning, the inflation rate from last year to this is about 5%.

Now,we are talking about hyper-inflation, and hyper-inflation is a much more severe case of increase in price, from what I have read, generally, its at a rate of about 50% every month.So, if we take the apple earlier, the price of the apple could increase by 47.25cents every month, and by the end of the year, it could cost roughly about 11 dollars...and so on....if this goes on, smaller notes become too little to be bothered, and worthless....the banks would then start printing larger value of notes......untill you see a enermous value on a bank note,like the one below...

This is a picture of  a 100 million Hungarian Pengő note and was the highest denomination of banknote ever issued, worth 10²⁰ or 100 quintillion

And thus, the dubious honor of having the largest bank note ever printed and used by the public belongs to the Magyar Nemzeti Bank of Hungary.

If you dont know how much 100 quintillion is, start counting the zeros,its about 100 000 000 000 000 000 000.

This was at the peak of hyperinflation of Hungary, which went through the worst inflation ever recorded between the end of 1945 and July 1946.

Gotta pity those hungarians,i bet the hyper-inflation produced many hungry hungarians  ;)