Word: assignats
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...political strife can demolish less durable forms of investment. In France, the lust for gold remains as strong today as it was nearly two centuries ago when the National Assembly tried to spend its way to prosperity by issuing 400 million units of a paper currency called the assignat. Within five years, 50 billion of the worthless scraps were circulating, gold had jumped 600 times in value, and hoarding proliferated, even though the government made efforts to deal in the metal punishable by death...
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