Money and Trade Wars in Interwar Europe (eBook)

Alessandro Roselli is Visiting Fellow at Cass Business School, City University, London, and at the University of Buckingham, UK. He has spent most of his career at the central Bank of Italy and has been A.C. Jemolo fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He has written extensively on banking, finance and economic history. His most recent book is Financial Structures and Regulation: A Comparison of Crises in the UK, USA and Italy.

Cover 1
Half-Title 2
Title 3
Copyright 4
Dedication 5
Contents 6
List of Figures and Tables 8
Preface 10
Acknowledgements 15
Part I The Gold Standard Reinstated 16
1 War Reparations and Hyperinflation in Germany 17
1 Inter-Allied war debt and Germany 17
2 The London Schedule of Payments 19
3 Reparations and hyperinflation: the balance of payments perspective 24
4 The fiscal policy/national output perspective 28
2 The Reichsmark: Stabilization and Foreign Loans 36
1 The mark stabilization of 1924 36
2 The Reichsbank reorganized: the Dawes Plan 42
3 The Young Plan 53
3 Golden Fetters Revisited 57
1 The gold standard: a few basic principles 57
2 Institutional factors 63
3 The gold standard leverage 66
4 Methods of de-levering in the post-war period 68
5 The completion of ‘realignments’ 1924–1928 71
6 The story of the Italian return to the gold standard 74
Part II The Gold Standard Collapse: Nationalism and Bilateralism in International Financial Relations 82
4 Towards Nationalism 83
1 German banking crisis and economic depression 83
2 German exchange controls the end of reparations
3 America and the inter-Allied debt 88
4 The Nazis in charge 90
5 Germany: the international side 93
6 Germany: the domestic side 100
7 The United States and Britain 103
8 Italy: living with an overvalued currency 112
5 Bond Repatriation, Export Subsidies and Clearing Agreements 117
1 International currency shortage and recourse to barter 117
2 Germany’s trade 121
3 Foreign exchange controls and debt reduction techniques as a tool of trade policy 124
4 Payment agreements 129
5 Clearing agreements: an overview 132
6 German clearing agreements with West European countries after the ‘New Plan’ 138
7 The ASKI marks 143
8 Germany’s dysfunctional clearings, and the final attempts to preserve the peace 145
6 Germany’s and Italy’s Relations with Southeastern Europe 150
1 German trade with the Balkans 150
2 Clearing agreements 153
3 Germany and Italy in Southeastern Europe: a case of noli me tangere! 158
4 Italy and Albania 162
7 The Italian–German clearing 167
1 Italy and Germany: their trade balance 167
2 The Italian–German clearing of 1934 172
3 Italy’s exchange controls: the new clearing agreement of 1935 176
Part III What Europe? 184
8 The Funk Plan (by Paolo Fonzi) 185
1 The Reichsbank’s prospective stance on monetary issues in 1940 185
2 Different strategies for the unification of Europe 189
3 The Funk Plan 194
4 National Socialist ideology and the rationale of the Funk Plan 197
9 Money for the World of Tomorrow 202
1 Reactions to the plan: fascist Italy 202
2 Reactions to the plan: Keynes and the British government 210
3 Some final considerations on the plan and multilateral clearings 213
Postscript 218
Notes 225
References 254
Archives 261
Index 262