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Park off River Road. Cache is an ammo box located off the hiking trail. This area can flood, so wear appropriate footware.
Have you ever heard economists (particularly of the Keynsian school of economics) say that a “little inflation” can be a good thing? Have you ever heard the argument for “pump priming?” (That was the economic gamble that FDR took, and won, to extricate us from the Great Depression.) Many people (but no monetarists!) believe that printing excess money on a regular basis can be a continual stimulus for the economy and will not have any dire consequences if done “wisely.” This may or may not be the case, but what happens if the printing presses are allowed to run with abandon (i.e., decidedly UN-wisely)? The German inflation (highlighted in the companion cache, “Stuck on Inflation”) was the best known case of this phenomenon, but the generally accepted worst inflation in history occurred in Hungary after World War II.
Although historically negligible, the brief inflationary spasm in Hungary in 1946 far exceeded Germany’s “Great Inflation.” The incident, like many before and after, had its origins in war. Toward the end of second war to end all wars, the Germans and Hungarian allies were driven slowly back, leaving a trail of refugees. With defeat impending and Hungary’s industrial capacity destroyed, the country had but one means to finance it subsistence—print money. The country did this for only a few months, but the resulting inflation very quickly reached monstrous proportions. Basically, that’s the whole story!
This cache is a 7.62mm ammo box (what I call 30-caliber) and contains only three banknotes from the Hungarian inflation. They were printed in April, May and June of 1946, prior to the formal collapse of the monetary system. The “first finder” note is for 100,000 adopengoral, equal to 2,000,000,000,000 X 100,000 pengos. I honestly have no idea how much a pengo would have bought prior to Hungary’s big inflation, but since it was the basic monetary unit (like our dollar), chances are it could have bought something of value. Any value that a single pengo had before this inflation began was obviously totally destroyed once it was over. Wisely, when Hungary reconstructed its monetary system, it no longer used the pengo as its basic unit.
The three banknotes, like the German notes in “Stuck on Inflation,” were also improperly glued to the mat when they were framed. As a result, these notes are also backed with a piece of that mat. Oh well!
Have fun, big spender!
Additional Hints
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Jbhyq lbh engure unir ybj vasyngvba be uvtu vasyngvba?