when you hand over your goods (an export) to someone far away, that the money in which they will pay you back (as payment for their import) is not just a pile of worthless paper--the so-called fiat money problem?

reflationary road the the Roosevelt administration took through the depression years [...] the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agrictultural Adjustment Act through the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act's focus on maintaining consumption

[...] the German government's deliberate policy, designed to make the payment of reparations, especially after the French occupation of the Ruhr, all but impossible. [...] As Albrecht Ritschl put it succinctly, "Inflation proved to be a formidable weapon against reparations creditors, at least in the short run. It helped insulate Germany from the international slump of 190/21, improving her export position and fueling internal demand ... It also exploited Germany's remaining foreign creditors, largely neutral countries, by depreciating the paper mark reserves they had accumulated during the stabilization period ... Above all, it paralyzed the financial system that would have been needed to organize an orderly transfer of reparations."

The centerpiece of their July 1932 election propaganda, the Wirstchaftliches Sofortprogramm (the immediate economic program) laid out an alternative to austerity that looked an awful lot like the WTB plan. The pamphlet's first three points could not have been more anti-austerity: first, "unemployment causes poverty, employment creates prosperity"; second, "capital does not create jobs, jobs create capital"; and third, "unemployment benefits burden the economy but job creation simulates the economy." [...]

They argue, inter alia, that consolidating in a downturn is twice as risky as doing it in an upturn