It has been estimated, in connection with the shortage of vegetable oils, that 50,000 tons of beech nuts might be collected annually. The oil yield would be 10,000 tons, or 1.6 per cent, of normal oil seed imports. There would be a by-product of 25,000 tons of cake to be used for feeding-stuff. The occupation of Poland will add 24 million tons of potatoes to the Old Reich's huge crop of 50 million tons. In September Reich exports were maintained at pre-war level to both Switzerland and Jugoslavia, though the former Czech and Austrian share in Jugoslav trade was not held. There are to be forced export pools in industry.
Germany hopes for ample oil from Rumania. The fall in oil output this year, and indeed since 1937, is put down to systematic curtailment by companies under British control. Jugoslavia has agreed to extend barter transactions to a number of commodities for which payment in foreign currencies has hitherto been demanded—such as copper, metal ores, hides and skins, Part of Jugoslavia's annual supply of 300,000 fat pigs will also be bartered; and, in exchange for German coal, iron goods, machinery and chemicals, Jugoslav supplies of wheat, feeding-stuffs and fruit will be increased. The exchange rate of 143 dinars to Rin, 1 will be unchanged.
During this decade, not merely was investment in economic plant and equipment largely suspended, but there seems to have been a net "disinvestment" In this decade, capital already invested in plant and equipment yielded little or no net return, and consequently provided neither the funds nor the incentive for further investment or even for full maintenance.
It seems demonstrable that defiationary forces continued to influence our economy long after the monetary signs had turned in the opposite direction, It-is the rapidity, the irregularity, and the nature of the current upturn that suggest caution, rather than the belief that our economy has reached a level intrinsic cally unsupportable. If there is any validity at all in the concept of a "qormal" level of business activity, it may plausibly be argued that it lies above rather than below the presen! level, high though that is in comparison with the first half of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.