GERMANY'S PAPER CURRENCY.

Shannon News, 11 January 1924, Page 4

GERMANY'S PAPER CURRENCY.

MILLIONS; IN MASKS.

Coming fresh to this orgy of _black noughts into which German mark currency has sunk, I begin to think that there is witchcraft in a row of ciphers. Those new German notes with their interminable strings of zeros are ! most confusing things to handle. It is so hard to judge the length of their tails at a glance. One needs the eyesight of a sharpshooter to distinguish mstantlv between one piece of .coloured paper minted 5000000 and another of similar size and colour marked 500000000; yet the first is only worth a penny and will not even buy a newspaper, while'the latter is for the moment worth about 10s, and will just about pay for your dinner. . . •'':?*.■ Yesterday I gave ; a man from whom I bought a box of matches 100 million; marks instead of 10. million. If it liad not been for the speed with which he disappeared, I should never have noticed that it was the equivalent of .Is »cl instcadof 2d= that Thad : handed him. But the new German notes of innumerable numerals and infinitesimal worth are just as unfamiliar to the 'German as to the foreigner; It is only witjiin the last few weeks that the virus with which, successive German Governments have inoculated,their currency has broken Out in this eruption of noughts. Everyone* swho rreceives ; a payment has to scrutinise each note carefully to-ascertain, its value, and: since large payments are made withpackets of notes literally several inches: thick, the delay in'places such as post offices and banks is f considerable, Moreover, prefitiftg 'by.< the general financial anarchy, alk sorts iof authorities besides the German Government have been issuing nbttJs'that look very like those of the National Rcichsbank., Municipalities- and" big trading con-' Cftrns have and Rhineland with this private paper-money., forcing it 'upon their employees and; customers as wages' or ' in''change. It; has been' good business ; for them, since]; between the 'tinte they-issued and ;thc r time they will redeem the sums 'the notes stand for have sunk to one- ( i hundredth part'of "their original value,.

sp that such concerns have obtained at; j a discount of 99 per cent, the services; or commodities they-'thtis purchased, j When I arrived in Dttsseldorf a week, ago and began to change English money) I found the pound was worth- 825 millions, 1050 "millions, and 1500 millions of marks in "throe places within 'two,', hours of time ari'd "two miles of dis-; tance of each other, all these rates be-' ing offered bv official money-changers,' not by private individuals. "; To keep ahead of the continual -j ''slump,"; 'retailers advance their' prices by' rule ; of : ihumb. The 1 hotel v j : bookstall-keeper that an Eng-| lish weekly paper, published at a shil-; ling, was 250,000,000 marks. "I have no small* change, nothing; less than a billion,/' I replied. '' I v/ilf pay for it when I come downstairs again." Half an hour later he said: "The price is, now 300 millions; it's 'after twelve o?clock." By the rate of exchange at which S l* had cashed pound notes earlier that; day, this made, the cost in English: money of a shilling magazine work out at four shillings. j : The shopkeepers keep elaborate;' tables like logarithms, by which "they" work out the prices of their goods a L ; fresh for each succeeding customer. The 1 process involves complicated, pencil caP culations, and a short-sighted tradesman who has forgotten most of his iirithmetifeis soon reduced to exaspera-, tion rind despair. ~< •' Yet • there is • no perceptible in the.'general standard of living as mark-ciphers. go on spawning; the bits of paper that peaple exchange between themselves have more noughts on them ? , that is all. Meanwhile the first 'scraper in Germany, ; concrete; "storeys' on rising opposite my hotel,' and will be there;,, housing industrious Germans, when the' present'paper'-monev delirium is forgotten.—G.Wl'P.