Allied Control Council for Germany

Currency Reform: On February 3, 1949, it was announced that the United States wished to discard the agreement reached in Moscow on August 30, 1948, whereby the Soviet Union would raise the Berlin blockade in return for the introduction of the eastern mark as the sole currency in the western sectors of Berlin. The United States introduced a new plan by which the western mark would continue to circulate in the western sectors and the Soviet mark in the eastern sector until a municipal government with effective control over the entire city was established. The United States proposal was submitted to the committee of experts appointed by the President of the United Nations Security Council to study the Berlin currency problem. Early in January 1949, the committee proposed a plan based on the principles of the August 30 agreement which recognized the division of Berlin into two separate administrations by recommending a split banking system with quadripartite control over the distribution and circulation of currency, with the eastern mark established as the sole currency of the city, and with additional safeguards against the possibility that the Soviet Union would use its control over the actual issue of the mark to harm the economy of the western sectors. The USSR did not wholly accept the plan, France and the United Kingdom were prepared to work from it, but the United States found it entirely unacceptable and submitted another. The second United States plan called for the use of the eastern mark as an over-all currency, with currency and trade exchanges controlled by a permanent board of trustees made up of citizens of neutral powers.