"When Money Dies" is the classic history of what happens when a nationOCOs currency depreciates beyond recovery. aIn 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. aExpensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. aGermanyOCOs finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake. Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. aHowever, OC quantitative easing, OCO that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. aWhatever the reason for a countryOCOs deficitOConecessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditureOCoit is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. aWhat if it does not?aGermany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.