Between 1921 and 1923, the German Papiermark lost almost all its value, and in November 1923 one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 marks. The roots lay in the First World War, when Germany paid for the war largely by borrowing, leaving debts of 156 billion marks by 1918. Reparations under the 1921 London Schedule of Payments added 50 billion marks more, and in 1921 the central bank began buying hard currency with paper money at any price. The mark stabilised briefly in early 1922 and then collapsed, falling from 320 marks per dollar in mid-1922 to 7,400 by December. Prices rose so fast that wages were paid and spent within hours. The crisis ended when the government introduced a new currency, the Rentenmark, backed by mortgage bonds, and blocked the central bank from printing more paper money. By 1924 the currency had stabilised and reparations resumed under the Dawes Plan. The disaster caused lasting political instability, and historians still debate how much reparations, rather than domestic policy, drove it.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.