The Worst Hyperinflations in History: Hungary in 1946 (2014)

The article explain the real reason for almost all the cases of hyperinflation in history (maybe all of them):<p>&quot;half of Hungary’s industrial capacity was destroyed and 90% was damaged. Transportation was difficult because most of the rail lines and locomotives had been destroyed. What remained had either been taken by the Nazis back to Germany or seized as reparations by the Russians.&quot;<p>How can you avoid inflation if your productive capacity is destroyed? You can&#x27;t.<p>How can you avoid &quot;to print&quot; more money if that destruction of real capacity is making your money less and less valuable? You can&#x27;t.<p>The exact same case happened in Germany (because the war and the war debt &#x27;reparations&#x27;) and Zimbabwe (because the agriculture capacity was destroyed by a redistribution of the land) (1).<p>Obviously, it&#x27;s the real economy what is important.<p>(1).- <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bilbo.economicoutlook.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=3773" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bilbo.economicoutlook.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=3773</a>

Somewhat related, the Forint still officially has minor units but practically they&#x27;re never used except in some cases where they&#x27;re for display only. Frustratingly some banks don&#x27;t use them in transactional data, which can lead to interesting bugs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leejo.github.io&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;02&#x2F;a_lot_of_huf&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leejo.github.io&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;02&#x2F;a_lot_of_huf&#x2F;</a>

Misleading title! „ As devastating as the German inflation was, there were three hyperinflations that made the German case look amateurish: _Hungary in 1946_, Yugoslavia in 1992-1993 and Zimbabwe from 2004 to 2009. Of these three, Hungary’s was the worst of them all.”

Hyperinflation can have positive effects too for the population: borrow money from a bank to buy a house, see the currency hyperinflate, pay off the debt with a week&#x27;s worth of work. It&#x27;s obviously terrible if you have savings, but for those in debt it is pretty good.

&gt; 150,000% PER DAY<p>That&#x27;s quite something - so you&#x27;d have to stick three zeros on daily

Misleading title. 2014 is the date of the article, not the time of inflation.

Note that this isn&#x27;t about Hungary in 2014, as I thought (and which shocked me). It&#x27;s about Hungary in 1945–6.

For such a short article it repeated a lot of things.

&gt;As devastating as the German inflation was, there were three hyperinflations that made the German case look amateurish<p>Well, even though Hungary and Zimbabwe had larger currency depreciation, I think the fact that neither ended with the Holocaust makes Germany&#x27;s &quot;worse&quot;