People started hoarding dollars and those that had commodities did very well. There was a very brisk black market trade in foreign currencies.
My father purchased a small car, at the begining of the currency crash and frove it into the ground on the terrible riural roads and then sold it 5 years later. He made a $30 profit on the deal because car prices had gone up so dramatically.
We did fine, because we got paid in dollars, but the people around us really suffered.
Before my father was born, his family lived in Germany and because they had their wealth in US dollars, they were spared the trauma of the German hyperinflation of the 20s. Many of the people he knew growing up had been wiped out by that period.
What a mess. It could happen here.
There money is less than worthless. The only thing that saves the populace is subsistance farming and money from people working (illegally) in South Africa.
All of it was of course illegal, but the government wasn't too keen to penalise such behaviour. At least I don't remember anyone getting caught.
It is likely that things were different in 70s and even before that, because rules relaxed a bit in the 80s.
Except for the United States in the 1920s.
This was occurring as recently as last year all over the world when commodity/food prices spiked. Anywhere you see black markets, you can find rationing and price fixing nearby.
I was in North Korea back in August, and bought one of each denomination as a souvenir. Guess they're going to be more valuable now.
Foreigners are not allowed to spend the North Korean won within the country. Instead, you pay in RMB, EUR, USD at locations approved to take foreign currency -- so we couldn't just go buy stuff at the same stores as the locals. Now I'm wondering how much of that foreign currency makes it back to the central government, given this news.
Read about it last night. The first stock market bubble. Far out... one Ken Layesque figure named John Law took over the entire French economy with his pyramid scheme, giving France its first paper money, for a while.
Since it was illegal to own foreign currency, a popular solution was to buy and store grain alcohol, on the assumption that no conceivable change in political system would ever make booze lose its value.
The approach had two main drawbacks - you needed a fair amount of space to store large quantities of ethanol, and you had to safeguard the storage room against the depredations of local aficionados.