For years the rates at which goods were exchanged with each other had not been determined by the anonymous and continuous workings of the market system, but by a series of ad hoc and inconsistent political decisions. The consequence was that for foreign trade purposes the Reichsmark now lacked any well-defined value. The purchasing power of the Reichsmark in foreign transactions depended entirely on which commodity it was measured in terms of and from where those goods were sourced.
