French Economist Warns of "Worldwide Weimar"

Remember the German Weimar republic? The place where it took a wheelbarrow full of paper money to buy a loaf of bread? (via Bloomberg)…

Imagine a country so ravaged by inflation that $1 will buy you 630 billion in the local currency, where a loaf of bread costs tens of billions, and where wheelbarrows are the new wallets.

That was the Weimar Republic in November 1923. A similar prospect may now await the world economy, says French economist Jacques Attali in “La Crise, et Apres?†(“The Crisis, and Then?â€,null,null,null), a stinging new critique of the financial meltdown.

…Attali is a French economist with experience as a special adviser to French President Francois Mitterand and he was the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development…

Nayeri: What do you mean, exactly, by “Weimar�

Attali: Depression, unemployment and inflation. What happens if the markets don’t finance the governments? The governments will finance themselves by creating money. This is a clear recipe for inflation — both depression and inflation.

…while he puts the odds of this happening at 10 percent, he says he also put the odds of nationalizing AIG or RBS at only 10 percent.