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13JULY1931, Prohibition Crushes Germany

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  German stocks dropped MAY1927 when dope profits became liable to income tax; NOV1928 when Hoover was elected & Rothstein killed, SEP1929 when the League of Nations endorsed global dope limitation, DEC1929 when German drug law called stimulants narcotics, 13JULY1931 when Germany signed the Narcotics Limitation Convention. U.S. Newspapers omitted mention of the wool-packed narcotics intercepted from Hamburg in April and made no mention of the  Dope Limitation Convention signed the day the bottom fell out of Germany's Bourse and banking system . Yet officers of New York's Bank of United States were at that moment still being tried for bank fraud with nary a word about the half-ton of morphine the feds noticed arriving aboard the Alesia  09DEC1930, two days before  that bank suffered fatal runs. No government is in a hurry to admit banks are failing because of government prohibition laws, and newspapers prefer to let readers connect the dots: 13JUL1931 Monday, La...

1931--Germany at the Brink

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  Enormous propaganda efforts were invested in making making it appear the financial collapse of the world's largest pharma and chemical industries just happened to coincide with the 1931 League of Nations dope convention throttling Germany's production and output ( link ) On 12JUL1931, German officials realized the failure of the  Damstadter und Nationalbank could not be concealed. Fortunately, the press refrained from linking the Nordwolle wool mills collapse with the tons of morphine loaded into packed woolens aboard the USS Milwaukee at the nearby port of Hamburg, just as they mentioned no such link with the Bank of United States and Alesia dope cargo. Still, the news article announcing  US READY TO ASK BIDS FOR 11 WAR VESSELS could hardly have been reassuring.( link ) Experienced observers had to realize their current fix had grown out of China's bid for U.S. assistance enforcing prohibition worldwide after witnessing the way Teddy Roosevelt's gendarmes strugg...

1931 Drugs, Banks and Crashes

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  April 19, 1931, a shipment of drug-laden German woolens aboard the USS Milwaukee docked at NY. Six days later papers reported it contained 3 tons of narcotics shipped in woolens from Hamburg in northern Germany. The situation mirrored the Bank of United States failure as 5 tons of morphine sat on the docks in a stakeout at the French liner Alesia. The graph shows German gold reserves and Young Plan reparations payments bonds crashing in value following the news. Bank of United States trials were all over the news that week as well .  Peter Temin, whose graph is above , is the same economist who pointed out the U.S. stock market began crashing the first week of September 1929. This was the week the League of Nations received planetary dope prohibition marching orders from its Opium Advisory Committee. In the above chart, failing bets on Germans paying war reparations coincide with the Nordwolle woolens bust, recover momentarily with the Moratorium on Brains and continue down...

Germany's Gathering Storm, 1931

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  American papers and politicians made the Moratorium an anchor to draw attention away from the cocaine, marijuana, hashish, coca leaves and newfangled opiates limitation convention. Few suspected the USA produced more cocaine than its commercial rival Germany   Newspaper headlines for 03JULY1931 painted a grim picture of Germany.( link ) One-third of the workforce was jobless, clashes among police, communist and nationalsocialist agitators were breaking out everywhere. ( link ). France was making trouble, large banks were failing and German officials were again begging for a moratorium on loan and reparations payments, just as they had in March of 1922. Back then it was the looming Jones-Miller Act to ban all importation of heroin into the US . Government agencies and VA hospitals had already stopped buying the painkiller of which Germany was the leading producer.  The following year hyperinflation completely wrecked Germany's economy.( link ) But the 1931 situatio...