Hyperinflation History

While we have no reason to fear hyperinflation in the U.S., Matthew O'Brien looks at Zimbabwe, the Weimar Republic and Post-WWII Hungary.  Here's the story from Hungary:

Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe have both captured our popular imagination when it comes to money-printing ad absurdum, but post-war Hungary has both of them beat. By many, many orders of magnitude. Indeed, on an annual basis, Hungary's peak inflation rate was over 10,000,000,000,000,000 times more severe than Weimar's. Prices in Hungary doubled every 15 hours.

Hungary turned to the printing press with such unparalleled gusto because they thought the alternative was much worse. The war had destroyed nearly half of Hungary's productive capacity. Basic infrastructure had quite literally been obliterated. The government wanted to rapidly rebuild this lost capacity (and put people back to work), but it couldn't afford to do so. The occupying Soviets had burdened the Hungarians both with onerous reparations (this will become a recurring theme) and the bill for the occupation. Hungary was left with a colossal government deficit and no way to finance it. They printed the difference.

There was at least some kind of logic at work here. Even absent any printing, the large-scale destruction from the war meant that inflation was going to jump up. There were simply fewer goods for money to chase. If inflation was going to surge anyway, why not at least use it to repair the country's bombed-out infrastructure? Short answer: because printing money to pay your bills quickly spirals out of control. In Hungary's case, this happened to the tune of an annual inflation rate of 9.63x10^26 percent.

Now that is hard to beat. Seriously, a little inflation isn't a terrible thing, as long as there is wage inflation in there.  Food prices going up doesn't translate into "oh my God, we're the Weimar Republic."