“The prices in the shops change every hour. No one knows what this week’s wages will buy at the end of the week. The mark is at the same time valueless and scarce. On the one hand, the shops do not want to receive marks, and some of them are unwilling to sell at any price at all. On the other hand…the banks were so short of ready cash that the Reichsbank advised them to cash no checks for more than 10,000 marks…and some of the biggest institutions were unable to cash their customers’ checks for payment of weekly wages.”95
