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Lehren aus der Hyper­inflation

Morgen (16. April 2023) reden wir im Podcast über Geldmenge und Inflation. Thema ist aber auch ein Rückblick auf die Hyperinflation von 1923. Mit dabei der Autor Frank Stocker.

Zur Einstimmung blicken wir auf ein anderes Buch zu dem Thema: „The Dying of Money“. Früher schon einmal hier besprochen, lohnt die Wiederholung:

2021 schrieb Zero Hedge: „Earlier this year, none other than Michael ‘Big Short’ Burry confirmed BofA’s greatest fears, as he picked up on the theme of Weimar Germany and specifically its hyperinflation, as the blueprint for what comes next in a lengthy tweetstorm cribbing generously from Parsson’s seminal work, warning that:

‚The US government is inviting inflation with its MMT-tinged policies. Brisk Debt/GDP, M2 increases while retail sales, PMI stage V recovery. Trillions more stimulus & re-opening to boost demand as employee and supply chain costs skyrocket.‘“

Jens O. Parsson ist der Autor des sehr lesenswerten Buches: „The Dying of Money“. Ein paar Highlights (in Klammern jeweils die Seite, aus der das Zitat stammt):

  • „When economic management becomes a matter of popular vote, as it has become in the United States, then the very salvation of the nation depends on each citizen`s assuming personal responsibility for enforcing healthful economic policies on his elected leaders.“ (98) – bto: Was für eine Parallele zu heute! Es ist klar, dass es nicht populär ist, zu sparen. Die Weichen sind gestellt. 
  • „Prices as an aggregate are mathematically determined by the total amount of money which is available for spending in a given period of time, in relation to the supply of all values which are available for purchase with money in that period of time.“ (101) – bto: Das wird in Hinblick auf die deutlich gesunkene Geldumlaufgeschwindigkeit immer wieder gern als veraltet abgetan. Ich denke aber, das ändert sich wieder.
  • „The original increase of the money supply, temporarily masked by a reduction of money velocity, was what set the equilibrium level of prices higher than their actual level and thus created the inflationary bias.“ (109) – bto: Das ist genau das, was wir auch heute erleben. Jetzt glaubt man, der Anstieg der Inflation ist vorübergehend. Kann sein. Muss nicht.
  • „The difference between the actual price level at any time and the higher equilibrium price level is the unrealized depreciation of a currency, and the living process of working upward from the lower to the higher is the process of living an inflation.“ (109) – bto: Vergleicht man die Geldmenge und sieht man sich die Entwicklung der Realwirtschaft in den letzten Jahren an, bemerkt man deutlich eine Lücke. Diese zu schließen, geht über mehr Wachstum – oder über mehr Inflation.
  • „Price inertia is very strong, difficult to get moving and difficult to stop.“ (109) – bto: Ja, das wäre es wohl.
  • „(…) an implicit disequilibrium may be persistent and even stable. Nevertheless, it is the underlying money demand available which dictates to buyers and sellers which way their prices must go and where they must arrive (…)“ (110) – bto: Dabei kann es entsprechende Verzögerungen geben, aber eben keine dauerhafte Abweichung.
  • „(…) inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.“ (110) – bto: Diese Aussage passt zu Friedman, wurde aber von Parsson unabhängig formuliert.
  • „Money is not properly a store of value because it has no intrinsic value of its own.“ (112) – bto: Das ist keine Frage. Es ist ein Anspruch auf künftiges Sozialprodukt. Gibt es zu viele Anspruchsscheine, verlieren sie an Wert.
  • „Money which is used as a store of value is money which is hors de combat for the time being.“ (112) – bto: Und es muss einen inneren Wert haben. Er meint Geld, welches beispielsweise im Ausland gelagert wird, in Ländern mit nicht so guter eigener Währung.
  • „Money and velocity theoretically could move independently of one another, but in practice they do not. Quantity leads, and velocity follows. At the beginning of an inflationary cycle, velocity declines while money quantity increases, thereby offsetting one another and masking the true inflationary potential.“ (115f) – bto: Es ist heute genauso und wir werden sehen, ob es diesmal dieselben Folgen hat.
  • „Later, in the mid-course of an inflationary cycle, money quantity and velocity both increase, thereby compounding the inflationary effects of one another.“ (116) – bto: Also erst die Geldmenge, dann reagiert die Umlaufgeschwindigkeit nach unten, dann beginnt sie zu steigen und die Inflation beginnt, die Geldnachfrage steigt und damit die Menge…
  • „People naturally wish to hold money less and to spend it faster when they see its value falling.“ (116) – bto: … weshalb die Umlaufgeschwindigkeit dann steigt.
  • „At the end of an inflationary cycle, velocity rises faster than money quantity, though only for a limited time after the quantity inflation stops.“ (116) – bto: Geht man auf die Bremse, nimmt das Vertrauen zu und die Inflation sinkt.
  • „There are at all times two distinct money supplies and two distinct velocities of money, one each in the market for national product and the market for national wealth. The comparison between the total supply of money and the gross national product alone, as is made in computing the so-called ‘income velocity’ of money is meaningless.“ (121) – bto: Das ist so zu lesen in den 1970er-Jahren – eine gute Beobachtung.
  • „Monetary inflation invariably makes itself felt first in capital markets, most consciously as a stock market boom. Prices of national product remain temporarily steady while stock prices rise and interest rates fall.“ (122f) – bto: Schöne Beschreibung! Und irgendwie auch so aktuell.
  • „Every stock market rise was preceded and accompanied by money inflation. Bull markets rest on nothing but inflation. The market fall following tight money merely brings the market back to its real-value level.“ – bto: Nur können wir uns heute keine Reduktion der Vermögenspreise leisten. Denn dann haben wir einen deflationären Asset-Preis-Schock.
  • „If luck is bad and people lose faith in all kinds of capital investments, there may be a general exodus of money from capital markets which will make the price inflation in national product much worse than the money inflation would seem to justify. This too happened as the initial acceleration of the German inflation gathered speed.“ (124) – bto: Das ist interessant. Denn hier wird gesagt, wenn das Geld aus den Vermögensmärkten fließt, geht es in die Realwirtschaft. Da bin ich nicht so sicher. Es wird doch zum Teil durch echte Verluste vernichtet.
  • „A boom in capital prices which exceeds the growth of real capital values and is not accompanied by falling prices in national product is an inflationary danger signal of the first order. The custom of ignoring capital markets and looking solely at national product in relation to total money demand is theoretically unfounded, may be dangerously tranquilizing, and in inflationary conditions will always lead to underestimating the magnitude of inflationary potential.“ – bto: Ich denke, das ist auch heute der Fall.
  • „Obviously, the real wealth of a nation is not increased merely because the paper wealth is multiplied, but a moderation of inflation occurs just as if it were. Paper wealth acts just as if it were real wealth. A nation`s economy would have the same underlying real value with a small paper superstructure as with a large one, but the apparent supply of capital assets would be smaller and the permissible money supply must also be smaller. (…) The immobilization of monetary inflation with an expansion of paper wealth may proceed to almost any extreme so long as the paper wealth retains its credibility. So long as the people do not doubt the paper wealth, all is well. (…) If the money wealth is repudiated, the total supply of saleable real values drops by the amount of the money wealth, and prices of real values must rise correspondingly.“ (130) – bto: Es ist dann die Flucht aus allen Geld-Assets in jede Form von Sachwert.
  • „Inflation (…) invariably stimulates a tremendous expansion of paper wealth in relation to real wealth. Government debt grows excessively, and private debt even more excessively.“ (131) – bto: Auch das können wir heute beobachten.
  • „At every turn we have found pools, tanks, and reservoirs where the accumulated inflation of the decades has been stored away without harm. Lagging money velocity has helped; price appreciation in capital markets has helped; spurious values in product and property have lent their aid. The most mammoth reservoir of all, the size of an ocean, is the unnatural and artificial growth of the money wealth (…).“ (131) – bto: Das hätte man auch heute schreiben können.

Diese Textauswahl traf ich schon vor einem Jahr. Der angesprochene Michael „Big Short“ Burry hat sich die Anekdoten aus der Weimarer Republik herausgesucht (was ich nicht gemacht habe, weil ich eben nicht über Hyperinflation schreiben wollte). Hier der Auszug bei Zero Hedge:

  • „The life of the inflation in its ripening stage was a paradox which had its own unmistakable characteristics. One was the great wealth, at least of those favored by the boom (…). Many great fortunes sprang up overnight (…) The cities, had an aimless and wanton youth.“ – bto: Das sieht man auch heute, denn wir haben eine wahre Wohlstandsillusion.
  • „Prices in Germany were steady, and both business and the stock market were booming. The exchange rate of the mark against the dollar and other currencies actually rose for a time, and the mark was momentarily the strongest currency in the world on inflation’s eve.“ – bto: Am Anfang ist es immer schön.
  • „Side by side with the wealth were the pockets of poverty. Greater numbers of people remained on the outside of the easy money, looking in but not able to enter. The crime rate soared.“ – bto: Bei uns ist es nicht so weit, aber es ist unstrittig, dass es zu einer zunehmenden Ungleichheit aufgrund der Geldpolitik kommt.
  • „Accounts of the time tell of a progressive demoralization which crept over the common people, compounded of their weariness with the breakneck pace, to no visible purpose, and their fears from watching their own precarious positions slip while others grew so conspicuously rich.“ – bto: Auch das stimmt so noch nicht. Aber es könnte die nächste Phase sein.
  • „Almost any kind of business could make money. Business failures and bankruptcies became few. The boom suspended the normal processes of natural selection by which the nonessential and ineffective otherwise would have been culled out.“ – bto: BINGO! Das haben wir als Zombifizierung seit Jahren.
  • „Speculation alone, while adding nothing to Germany’s wealth, became one of its largest activities. The fever to join in turning a quick mark infected nearly all classes. Everyone from the elevator operator up was playing the market.“ – bto: Billiges Geld – viel davon – ist die Voraussetzung für jede Art von Blase.
  • „The volumes of turnover in securities on the Berlin Bourse became so high that the financial industry could not keep up with the paperwork (…) and the Bourse was obliged to close several days a week to work off the backlog.“ – bto: Heute hilft die Technik, wobei Robinhood den Handel einschränken musste, als es bei GameStop zu sehr zur Sache ging.
  • „All the marks that existed in the world in the summer of 1922 were not worth enough, by November of 1923, to buy a single newspaper or a tram ticket. That was the spectacular part of the collapse, but most of the real loss in money wealth had been suffered much earlier.“ – bto: Deshalb bin ich immer zurückhaltend. Eine Hyperinflation sehe ich nun nicht.
  • „Throughout these years the structure was quietly building itself up for the blow. Germany’s inflationcycle ran not for a year but for nine years, representing eight years of gestation and only one year of collapse.“ – bto: Und wie lange läuft die inflationäre Politik bei uns schon?

Ich finde es faszinierend, wie treffend die Beschreibung in einem Buch aus dem Jahr 1974 heute ist.

→ zerohedge.com: „Michael ‘Big Short’ Burry: This Is The Greatest Bubble Of All Time In All Things ‘By Two Orders Of Magnitude’“, 16. Juni 2021