NEW GERMAN CURRENCY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18533, 18 October 1923, Page 9

NEW GERMAN CURRENCY.

GOLD-BACKED unit.

(NEW BANK ESTABLISHED.

Australian and N.Z. C*b!o Association. (Reed.. 9.51 p.m.) BERLIN. Oct. 16. Under the dictatorial powers conferred by the Emergency Law the Government has decided to launch its new currency schema. The new unit of currency will be called the rentenmark. It will bo issued by a new privately-owned bank called the Rentenbank, and will be backed by gold securities. ; The Rentenbank will place 1200 million rentenmarks at the disposal of the Government. Paper marks will also be legal tender.

The. Rentenbank shows a capital of 3000 million rentenmarks, subscribed in equal parts by agriculture on one hand and industry, tirade and commerce on the other.

The German Government's Bill for the creation of the new currency provides for the establishment of a currency bank by the agricultural industry, trade and commerce, banking world, and property owners. The bank will be independent of Government intervention. The rentenmark will be worth 0.3| grammes" of fine gold: The bank will be authorised to grant loans to the Reich during the next two years in rentenmarks up to 2000 million, and after two years the bank'will bo liquidated. ■ ' ■ •

THE IMPOSSIBLE MARK. AN ORGY OF" CYPHERS. ■J" LONDON, Oct. 8. Mr. Ward Price, telegraphing from* Dusseldorf to the Daily Mail, says that German currency has become a bewildering orgy of noughts, and that it is difficult readily to distinguish between 6.600.000 and 50,000,000 mark notes. They are similar in size and colour. "1 gave a man a 1,000.000.000 mark note, worth Is Bd, for a box of matches, instead of a 10.000,000 mark note, worth 2d. I would not have perceived my mistake but for the rapidity of the matchseller's disappearance. • "Financial anarchy has reached such a pitch that retailers automatically advance prices to each succeeding customer." . [.';■ :■>.. '

. Mr. Ward Price inquired the price of an English magazine, and was informed that it -was 250,000,000 marks. He said he had no small change—nothing less than a' billion, and that he would get it when lie came downstairs half-an-hour later. •■ ' - -.: '. : -., ..

Then he learned that the price had ' been raised to because itwas after midday. ■«

The shopkeepers, he says, are pencilling all day long, using great sheets of complicated tables " like logarithms that are calculated to bring . despair to the uneducated shopkeeper. The shops ire open only four hours a day. The retailers prefer to keep their stocks.