Political Control of The State Bank
Although the State Bank was always politically subordinate to the G.D.R. government, this was made explicit by a law of 19 December 1974 which defined the State Bank as an organ of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic and formalised the practice of the Bank’s president being a member of the Council of Ministers. While this stood in stark contrast to the political independence of West Germany’s Bundesbank it was common during this era for there to be political control over the nation’s Central Bank-–though not usually to the extent found in East Germany and the other Eastern Bloc economies, where the polices and technical operation of the Central Bank were completely subservient to policies of the governing Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
The State Bank of the GDR was also a member of the International Bank for Economic Co-operation, a Comecon organisation founded in 1957 with its headquarters in Moscow. The nominal currencies used for trading, international clearing and settlement purposes by this organisation were transfer roubles and gold reserves.
Read more about this topic: Staatsbank
Famous quotes containing the words political, control, state and/or bank:
“All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours.”
—Lucy Stone (1818–1893)
“In Vietnam, some of us lost control of our lives. I want my life back. I almost feel like I’ve been missing in action for twenty-two years.”
—Wanda Sparks, U.S. nurse. As quoted in the New York Times Magazine, p. 72 (November 7, 1993)
“They will take a state and human nature for their tablet, and begin by making a clean surface.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)