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DrGU's avatar

Austerity is one step removed from the Weimer Republic.

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Tom McNabb's avatar

There are strong parallels, right.

That said, in finally instituting austerity, Minister of Finance, Hjalmar Schacht, effectively ended the hyperinflation--Mosler, Armstrong (book abstract, Weimar...). That said there was significant unemployment, i.e., overshoot, resulting from Schacht's quantitative approach, Mosler and Armstrong suggest.

Putting aside Germany's response, as Allied victor, what how would you have set the Armistice terms? Ideally, the allies could have won a stronger victory, been left less nearly equally economically ruined, and so on and we could have the strong one-sided decision of a *proper hypothetical*.

The problem as I see it was that the major companies were still controlled by the same shareholders, so in back of the democratic Weimar government lay the same leadership of the economic strcture, with unchanged feudal era attitudes.

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