Wealth & Money Quote by Hjalmar Schacht

Calling the economy a "very sensitive organism" is a strategic dodge disguised as a diagnosis. Hjalmar Schacht, the Weimar-and-Nazi-era financial technician who helped stabilize Germany after hyperinflation and later engineered forms of rearmament finance, isn’t offering a cozy metaphor. He’s asserting that markets and public confidence are living systems: twitchy, reactive, prone to fever when startled by policy shocks, labor unrest, or political theater. The line’s persuasive power comes from how it smuggles in a hierarchy of authority. If the economy is biological, then the economist becomes the physician, and democratic demands start to sound like reckless self-medication.

The subtext is discipline. "Sensitive" doesn’t just mean fragile; it implies that ordinary people, noisy parliaments, and moral arguments about redistribution are contaminants. Better, the metaphor suggests, to keep the patient calm: stabilize currency, manage expectations, avoid experiments. In the interwar German context, that’s not neutral advice. It’s a justification for technocratic control at moments when society is boiling and when "confidence" can be weaponized as a veto against reforms.

Schacht’s organism framing also narrows responsibility. If the economy “reacts,” then policy failures can be reframed as unfortunate symptoms rather than choices with winners and losers. It’s a clever rhetorical move: naturalize the system, personalize its moods, and make dissent look like malpractice. The economy becomes something you listen to, not something you argue about.