GERMANY’S DEBTS.

Wairarapa Age, 23 December 1932, Page 5

GERMANY’S DEBTS.

SUGGESTED REDUCTION OF INTEREST. CHOICE BEFORE CREDITORS. TRADE DUMPING. (Received Thursday, 10.39 p.tn.) BERLIN, December 22. Germany is consuming her capital and continually getting poorer, said Herr Hughenberg, in proposing a new scheme for the reduction of interest on foreign and private debts from five to one and a half per cent. He suggested that negotiations thereon should begin at the expiration If the ‘‘stand still'’ agreement in February, when the fate of three hundred millions sterling of short term credits will be involved. "Our creditors,” he said, “must choose between getting their capital back and receiving interest. If mutual agreement were impossible, Germany might be forced to act alone. In addition to the reduction of interest, amortisation payments should not exceed the value of our exports surplus. We could dump goods, but we want to avoid that in the interests of our creditors and ourselves. ’ ’ MORE UNEMPLOYMENT. MONEY TO FINANCE WORK. BERLIN, December 21. Belying hopes that unemployment was declining, the number of unemployed in the first half of December increased by 249,000' to 5,604,000. Cabinet has approved an agreement between the Reichsbank and the Ministries of Finance and Economics to provide the Commissioner for Employment, Herr Gereke, with 500 1 million marks for the immediate provision of work. MILDER METHODS.

QUIETENING OF POLITICAL PASSIONS. BERLIN, December 21. General von Schleicher’s effort to inaugurate a milder regime in Germany has been begun by the publication of a Presidential decree cancelling most of the von Papen Government’s repressive political measures. It is officially explained that the cancellation is due to the visible quietening of political passions, and the public is recommended to settle its political differences in a manner worthy of a civilised people. CHRISTMAS AMNESTY. RELEASE OF MANY PRISONERS. LONDON, December 31. "The Times’* Berlin correspondent says that about fifteen thousand political and other prisoners will be released at Christmas under the Amnesty Bill which passed the Reichstag in a single vote. Any attempt to keep Nazi, Socialist find Communist .prisoners in the cells over the holidays would have led to a meeting of the Reichstag and a Christmas crisis.