In instances such as Zimbabwe or Argentina, where hyperinflation spirals out of control, how do people feed themselves and pay for the bare necessities? Does the government step in and provide the support needed to prevent mass starvation?
In: Economics
This happened to a degree in Yugoslavia, its economy never recovered after the oil crisis – I was a kid then, and I remember my parents opening a bank account in Austria (which was technically illegal but lots of people did it & the government didn’t enforce it). You would exchange the money for foreign currency, or spend it quickly. It wasn’t all bad either – if you had a loan the payments became laughable. I remember being given a stack of 100-dinar bills that were quite obviously freshly printed, but already worthless, to play with.
Luckily in that case the government very quickly started tackling the problem head on and the situation improved before things would get so out of hand that you’d have starvation or anything like that. Those measures didn’t save the country in the long run, though – fanatics thrive in situations like these and an economic crisis would be a terrible thing for them to waste & so they milked it hard. Wasn’t the only reason for the final fall of course, but surely a major one.
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