CURRENCY AND TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 12, 15 January 1924, Page 6

CURRENCY AND TRADE.

The disadvantage at which British nationals are placed on account of the depreciation of German currency arc described In the report of Mr. B. S. Grey, Clearing House Controller, issued in London on October 1!). A British trader who is Indebted to a German national in the sum of 1000 marks is required to pay £30 to the office in discharge of his indebtedness; but, whereas the Allied Governments have honoured their signature to the treaty, and rigidly enforced this provision upon their debtor nationals, the German Government, by its internal legislation, has relieved its debtor nationals of this obligation and absolved them from the duty imposed upon them by the treaty. "Even this." the Controller says, "is not the limit of the indulgence granted by the German Government to its nationals, for in the case of those debtors whose debts were contracted in Allied currency the German Government permits them to discharge their liability by the payment of a sum in marks representing an infinitesimal fraction only of their contractural obligation." Mr. Grey goes on to quote the case of a British national who before the war advanced 1,00,000 marks to a German manufacturer, which the latter employed in the erection and equipment of a factory. The value of this advance at the date it was made was £50,000.. Under the German Clearing Office law, the debtor Is discharged from his liability to his British creditor by the payment of the present equivalent of something less than one halfpenny. He, however, retains possession of the factory and its equipment, the world value of which has hot depreciated, and to-day represents an investment of 1,000,000 gold marks.