'THE delirium of milliards' was a phrase of Rathenau's coining.

'The majority of statesmen and financiers think in terms of paper,' he had written.* (Berliner
Tageblatt February 9, 1921.)
They sit in their offices and look at papers which are lying in front of them, and on those
papers are written figures which again represent papers They write down noughts, and
nine noughts mean a milliard. A milliard comes easily and trippingly to the tongue, but no
one can imagine a milliard.
What is a milliard? Does a wood contain a milliard leaves? Are there a milliard blades of
grass in a meadow? Who knows? If the Tiergarten were to be cleared and wheat sown upon
its surface, how many stalks would grow? Two milliards!
Rathenau rightly diagnosed that delirium as an affliction not of the people in general that
was to come but of those who were supposedly in control of the country's finances, who
had raised the note circulation since the beginning of the year from 73 milliard marks to 80
milliard. The immediate blame for the latest fall in the mark, which by the middle of August
had slid from June's figure of 261 to the pound to 310, was laid squarely by Rathenau (as by
Wirth) on the reparation payments. The 1,000 million gold marks money at the pre-war
parity due at the end of August had been found, but less than 60 per cent had been raised
on realistic terms in foreign credits or otherwise. 'Next November, or next spring,' Rathenau
said, 'whenever a large payment comes, exchange will fall again to a still lower level. This
cannot go on.'
The mechanism of depreciation had many wheels, however. A close though unnamed
confederate of Herr Hugo Stinnes, the industrialist, assessing the situation with great
candour a few weeks later said that the real breaking point came immediately after the
German government repaid the loan which had been arranged in England by Herr
Mannheimer of Mendelssohn's Bank, 'the confidential man' of Dr Rudolf Havenstein,
President of the Reichs-bank since 1908. Mannheimer, instructed by his chief, went out in
August 1921 and started to buy foreign currency at any price 'for Germany had any
amount of paper marks but no foreign currency.' This was the first signal of
the absolute breakdown in the value of the mark. Since then, foreigners have not speculated
to the same extent in marks and have kept their holdings, waiting for some improvement.
The banks, on behalf of their clients and the industrialists, went further and not only sold
their marks at any price but also started to speculate.
There were four reasons for encouraging such a policy: to enable heavy industry to
compete with foreign countries, to satisfy the workmen's demands by increasing their
wages with worthless paper marks, to avoid political troubles and disturbances and also
to prove to the world that Germany could not fulfil the Versailles Treaty