[nhaehnle]

You may be interested in this paper on hyperinflation: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1799102

The tl;dr version: The root cause of hyperinflation has never in history been runaway printing of money. Rather, the root cause is always some mixture of foreign-currency denominated debt, political chaos, and collapse of a country's productive capacity.

To give a bit more detail: This analysis applies to both the Weimar republic hyperinflation (excessive reparations demanded by the victors of World War I denominated in real goods and foreign currencies, combined with a military occupation of Germany's steel and coal industrial center) and the recent Zimbabwe hyperinflation (high USD-denominated government debt combined with a collapse of domestic production due to stupid economic reforms).

The hyperinflation is simply a result of such untenable economic situations. They tend to be "cleansing fires" in some sense: especially in the Weimar republic case, the hyperinflation made it very obvious to everybody that the war debts need to be backed off.