Word: moratorium
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Like misers in their closets, each little Central European government was trying to hoard its currency last week. Hungarians, always drastic and dramatic, were first to declare an actual "transfer moratorium." In Budapest handsome blond Baron Frederick de Koranyi (who in ornate Magyar costume on State holidays makes Magyar ladies' eyes dance) issued the Hungarian moratorium decree as Minister of Finance. It provides that for the next twelve months...
...This moratorium was no surprise. Wall Street has expected some sort of Hungarian moratorium for months. The fact that it turned out to be only a "transfer moratorium," with pengo payments continuing to pile up in Hungary, softened the blow. But a blow it was. U. S. bankers have extended and U. S. investors hold roughly 25% of Hungary's short-term credits and bonds. On the total U. S. investment of $179,000,000 the loss or postponement of interest and sinking fund charges during 1932 will approximate...
France, when she made her recent "political loans" to Jugoslavia and Rumania, made them on the distinct understanding that there would be no moratorium in that quarter. But King Alexander, royal Dictator of Jugoslavia, was in Paris incognito only a few days ago, called at the Bank of France. Did he ask for more money? Did he get it? Was all quiet along the French anti-moratorium front...
...Hungary similar restrictions on private currency exports preceded the "transfer moratorium," and remained in effect last week. To the scandal of all Budapest it was suddenly discovered that the Countess Bethlen, a socialite playwright and wife of former Premier Count Stephen Bethlen de Bethlen, was outside Hungary on a literary lecture tour. Furious Socialist Deputies demanded to know what "sinister influence" had procured the countess enough foreign money on which to travel? Or was she a criminal? Had she secret deposits abroad? What of the new Hungarian law obliging every citizen to put such deposits instantly at the disposal...
...Montevideo flayed the Wall Street tendency "to group all South American Nations together as defaulters," argued that if even Banker Kahn did not appreciate the "heroic sacrifices" made by the Uruguayan people to meet interest and sinking fund charges on their bonds, Uruguay might as well declare a moratorium...