Warding off a recession

PRINTING money creates a sense of nervousness among both economists and the public. It immediately invokes memories of the hyperinflation that occurred in Weimar Germany in 1923, when “prices increased so rapidly that waiters changed the prices on the menu several times during the course of a lunch. Sometimes customers had to pay double the price listed on the menu when they ordered.”

In post-war Japan in 1947, “fishermen and farmers used scales to weigh currency and change, rather than bothering to count it.”