> (2)As to reasons for Hitler's economic exploits in the first few years of his
> regime, it would be worth looking at the effects of various bilateral barter
> deals he made with various other down-and-out countries. There were quite a few
> of these, some of them for fairly large quantities of goods. The US Tarriff
> Commission published a couple of monographs on this topic not long before war
> broke out in Europe.
>
> K. Mickey
This is interesting information. Barter was very much on the mind of American business during the eraly days after Nixon's opening to China, when it was thought that opening Chinese market was going to be a just a dream. George Ball told the NY Times in 1974 that in his opinion US-China trade would not reach beyond US$3 billion/year for the forseeable future. (Two way trade was around US$110 billion in 1998).
Bartering is now keeping the Russian economy going.
Henry C.K. Liu