Over the years, Germany had had no shortage of foreign “experts” willing to tell it how to stabilize its currency. The British ambassador, Viscount d’Abernon, himself a currency expert, remarked that on arriving in Berlin, these advisers would be invited to “entertainments after dinner—like actresses with doubtful pasts,” thereafter generally to meet a “sad fate. During life, they empty every room in which they hold forth, and death finds them in madhouses.” The monetary technicians had universally failed because it was not intellectual but financial help that Germany needed. This time,
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