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Hyperinflation
What it takes away
Eight steps, about twelve minutes, a question at each. You need no economics and no preparation, only a willingness to guess before you are told.
Step 1 of 8
This part takes as read what caused it. In all three countries a state was spending money it had not raised, and the bank that issues the currency was making the rest.
The question
The last part settled what Germany, Zimbabwe and Venezuela had in common; this part is what it did to the people living with it.
The money stops being what prices are quoted in. Shops and traders start setting prices off the day's dollar exchange rate, and by January 2009 Zimbabwe's central bank was ordering traders selling in foreign currency to quote a local price as well.
Then it stops being something a country's own figures can see. Zimbabwe's statistics office made its last monthly recording of the year in July 2008; Venezuela's central bank stopped publishing its inflation figures in December 2015. The figure a reader finds quoted for Zimbabwe's peak was estimated rather than surveyed, and the percentages on offer cover different spans.
Then it stops being something a contract can be written in. Germany's whole war debt was worth 15.4 Pfennig in November 1923 on the Bundesbank's figures, and a lifetime's savings went the same way. And nearly eight million Venezuelans are living somewhere else.
What this module covers
Written for every level. Tap any underlined word for what it means, and open the boxes below for the economics behind each decision. If you already know the theory, skip both and the history reads straight through.
In January 2009 Zimbabwe's ordered traders already selling in foreign currency to quote a Zimbabwe dollar price too, worked out from the .
The local money had stopped being what a price was thought in. Gonzalo Huertas, in a Peterson Institute brief, describes much of the pricing in an extreme inflation being done with foreign currency as the reference.
German shops in 1923 had got there without an order. The German museum record has their opening hours set by the times the current exchange rates were announced, and a restaurant bill that could double during the meal.
Zimbabwe's formula was to rest on the exchange rate the inter-bank market set, fixed at the mid-rate and sent out by the Bank. The local price was a conversion of the foreign one.
Take a guess. You are not expected to know the answers, and being wrong is what makes a number stick.
In January 2009 Zimbabwe's central bank made traders selling in foreign currency quote a local price too. What was that local price worked out from?
Six months before that order, in July 2008, Zimbabwe's statistics office made its last monthly recording of prices for 2008.
Zimbabwe's money was losing value inside a day, and an index measures what shops charged over a whole month, so each survey described a month that had already gone.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas records that last release at 2,600.2 per cent for the month, and 231 million per cent for the twelve months to July. Hanke and Krus put the peak three and a half months later.
The Bank asked in January 2009 that the statistics office be adequately equipped to survey what it called the latest positive developments on inflation. The government told it to start tracking prices in foreign currency.
Venezuela's central bank stopped seven years later. José Luis Saboin García, in an working paper of 2018, took his Venezuelan figure from the country's legislature instead.
Zimbabwe's own statistics office recorded inflation month by month until July 2008, its last release of that year. What happened to prices after that date?
One widely quoted figure for Zimbabwe's worst month was worked out from one company's price.
Old Mutual was listed in Harare and in London at once, so the same holding had a price in Zimbabwe dollars and a price in pounds on the same day. Set one against the other and you have what a Zimbabwe dollar was really fetching.
That is what Steve Hanke and Nicholas Krus did for August to November 2008, and Zimbabwe's inflation came out of the changes in it. Their table calls the basis an implied exchange rate.
Zimbabwe's central bank names the same share and calls its price a bubble. Its January 2009 statement has speculators bidding it up, and records the price standing in for the parallel market exchange rate.
So Zimbabwe's peak figure is a currency price rather than a shop price. The same table gives Germany's basis as a wholesale price index, so the two peaks are not measured the same way.
Zimbabwe's most-quoted peak figure was calculated from the price of Old Mutual shares, traded in Harare and in London. What did those two prices give?
Module 5 of 7 in Hyperinflation
[1] When Zimbabwe's statistics office last measured prices, and what an inflation did to German company debts: Federal Reserve System: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute 2011 Annual Report, Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, by Janet Koech; and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics, Inflating Away the Debt, 13 July 2023, by Brunnermeier, Correia, Luck, Verner and Zimmermann.
[2] What Zimbabwe's central bank told traders to price off, and what it said about its own statistics office: Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Monetary Policy Statement, January 2009; and the 2008 Annual Report.
[3] The table that states its own basis, and where the doubling time comes from: Cato Institute, Steve H. Hanke and Nicholas Krus, World Hyperinflations, Working Paper, August 2012.
[4] When Venezuela's central bank stopped publishing, and who counted after it: International Monetary Fund, Working Paper WP/18/266, José Luis Saboin García: The Modern Hyperinflation Cycle: Some New Empirical Regularities, December 2018.
[5] Venezuela's inflation in 2018, quarter by quarter and for the year: United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean: Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela country notes, 2019 and 2024 editions; the 2024 note is at repositorio.cepal.org, bitstream c47f18ad-198a-4456-bef6-f734c587f504.
[6] How far Venezuela's economy fell, and how many people left: Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the United States Congress: R44841, Venezuela: Background and U.S. Relations, 6 December 2022; IF10230, Venezuela: Political Crisis and U.S. Policy, updated 30 September 2025; IF11268, Zimbabwe: A Continuing Crisis, updated 27 November 2019; and R44633, Zimbabwe: Current Issues and U.S. Policy, 15 September 2016.
[7] How far Zimbabwe's prices rose in one month, in a central bank's explainer for the public: Bank of England, explainer: How have prices changed over time?, 16 December 2021.
[8] What a price is quoted in when the money has stopped working: Peterson Institute for International Economics, Gonzalo Huertas, Policy Brief 19-13: Hyperinflation in Venezuela: A Stabilization Handbook, September 2019.
[9] The loop by which an expectation about tomorrow raises a price today: European Central Bank, Price stability: why is it important for you?, April 2009.
[10] What Germany's war debt was worth on the day the currency changed: Deutsche Bundesbank, Inflation - lessons learnt from history, 15 October 2012.
[11] What a German shop's opening hours followed in 1923, and what was left of people's savings: Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO: Die Inflation (Stand 14 September 2014).
Country data from the World Bank (CC BY 4.0) and the UNDP Human Development Report (CC BY 3.0 IGO)
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