Lessons for America from Germany’s Hyperinflation

`` Debtors were pitted against creditors, with hundreds of thousands of debtors rushing to pay off their mortgages and other loans with worthless currency, and creditors helplessly insisting that the value of money borrowed be repaid. One embittered banker remarked that "our real estate credit, to which Germany owes so much for its past reconstruction and which is also so indispensable for a solid reconstruction, must be buried in the grave."''