The posterchild for what happens when your government soundly buggers the national currency.

For one possible outcome for the US dollar and, maybe even the UK pound if the money printers get their way again, Casey Research has a nice selection of hyperinflation aflicted banknotes from the many nations around the world who have found out the hard way that state sponsored currency debasement always fails :

History has a message for us: No fiat currency has lasted forever. Eventually, they all fail.

BMG BullionBars recently published a poster featuring pictures of numerous currencies that have gone bust. Some got there quickly, while others took a century or more. Regardless of how long it took, though, the seductive temptations allowed under a fiat monetary system eventually caught up with these governments, and their currencies went poof!

You might suspect this happened only to third world countries. You’d be wrong. There was no discrimination as to the size or perceived stability of a nation’s economy; if the leaders abused their currency, the country paid the price.

As you scroll through the currencies below, you’ll see some long-ago casualties. What’s shocking, though, is how many have occurred in our lifetime. You might count how many currencies have failed since you’ve been born.

On the last point there, I count 18 different dead fiat currencies whilst I have been hanging around.

Go and have a look and see how many you get as well as marvelling at the Zimbabwe 100 trillion dollar note (pictured above) – I hate to think of the size of the price tags on items in Zimbabwe from 2006 when they had to fit 12 zeros to fit into the price!