Abstract

Germany, an Economic Colony

Economic and financial recovery in Germany has made such enormous progress in the last four years that one might almost speak of a return to "normalcy," if this recovery were not largely due to the influx of foreign funds, that is, to an artificial stimulus. Those foreign funds enabled the German borrowers to expand their business. With increasing economic activity, receipts from customs duties and taxes increased. The internal raising of reparation payments thereby became comparatively easy. Foreign exchange became so abundant as to provide both for the transfer of the reparation payments and for the payment of the ever-increasing imports. A casual observer may indeed be perfectly satisfied with the present monetary, fiscal, and economic situation in Germany. He may point to the fact that production, real wages, stock dividends, railway earnings, and the foreign trade balance are pretty much the same as in pre-war times. Does this, however, mean that conditions are once more normal? The national income, to be sure, is steadily increasing.