Foreign Exchange

The dramatic yet genuinely constructive policies of Mussolini have advanced rates for Italian lire. Belgian and French francs have also continued strong. Fewer Bank of France notes are now outstanding than when the French armies entered the Ruhr. This is in the strongest possible contrast to Germany, whose currency now aggregates nearly five trillion marks through the colossal addition last week of 683 billion. The German $50,000,000 "loan" failed dismally, German industrialists evidently holding completely aloof. New

York rates for marks in consequence began to sag, but the German government again supported the market, with the result that rates have been practically unchanged. This "pegging" of mark exchange rates is too artificial to continue indefinitely.