Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Golden years
- 2 The sinews of war
- 3 The political economy of revolution
- 4 Versailles and Hamburg
- 5 Relative stabilisation
- 6 The failure of ‘fulfilment’
- 7 Dissolution and liquidation
- 8 The legacy of the inflation
- Epilogue: Hitler's inflation
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The failure of ‘fulfilment’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Golden years
- 2 The sinews of war
- 3 The political economy of revolution
- 4 Versailles and Hamburg
- 5 Relative stabilisation
- 6 The failure of ‘fulfilment’
- 7 Dissolution and liquidation
- 8 The legacy of the inflation
- Epilogue: Hitler's inflation
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The rationale of ‘fulfilment’
At no time in the period of ‘relative stabilisation’ between March 1920 and May 1921 did Max Warburg explicitly advocate a return to inflationary fiscal and monetary policies. However, in his influential speech at the German Bankers' Conference in October 1920, he was careful to stress that there were circumstances in which such a return to inflation might be impossible to avoid. Unlike some commentators, notably Rathenau, Warburg did not at this juncture blame the inflation solely on the impact of the peace terms on the balance of payments. Monetary factors, he conceded, also played an important role. However, he insisted that no ‘financial-technical’ policy to halt inflation could be effective if the balance of payments remained in deficit, repeating the now-familiar Hamburg call for a lifting of restrictions on trade:
Even at the risk of sometimes selling our own products too cheaply abroad, the current policy must be abandoned. The world must be made to understand that it is impossible to burden a country with debts and at the same time to deprive it of the means of paying them […] The most complete collapse of the currency […] cannot […] be avoided if the peace treaty is maintained in its present form […] We are on the edge of the abyss. This line of argument had, of course, been heard before.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Paper and IronHamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1897–1927, pp. 310 - 363Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995