I may choose to give my German reading a severe test and see what I can pick out from this article as well! Danke!

Addendum: There is nothing like a paywall AND different options on cookies all presented to one in wonderfully grown-up German to humble an English-native reader at the same level in English, but definitely NOT in German! I have to give a little bravo to Cicero, though -- that publication stands on business, and I read German well enough to know that! Just getting to the article was an experience that I enjoyed because I like a challenge! I can tell you, upon getting to the article, that your summary is very good ... I think I am going to pull up DeepL for translation and work this entire article out properly.

One thing I will tell you as a historical note from the U.S.: the system of sharecropping here, under which my own ancestors worked for almost 100 years after slavery ended, is a textbook example of princely money at work under wicked princes -- or, the petty, tiny wicked principalities the old plantations became. The enslaved were never compensated for their work, so they essentially had to take out the things they needed to survive as a loan at enough interest to make sure they stayed broke and gave up all the value they created to the land owners. OF COURSE, this is the old European system simply ratcheted up ... abject serfdom for former slaves. Herr Wieck almost exactly described the Southern planters' creation of scrip under that system, a pure princely money to remove dollars (which then were still gold or backed with gold) from my ancestors' hands.

And, about seeing the future: those warning signs he speaks of are certainly all flashing... and the ending of the article makes me sad. Like the U.S., it is clear what needs to be done ... and also clear that there are too many powerful interests in not allowing those things to happen. As he says, the West has a lot of the same problems everywhere. So we are likely to have to go through to get to the other side. At least the information on what we need to do to rebuild after the collapse is available!