The Cordova Daily Times

NEW SOVIET PLAN FOR CURRENCY SYSTEM

BERLIN, Jan. 17.-The magician who handles the finances of Soviet Russia will shortly attempt a new prestidigitation which, if successful may win him the admiration of the rest of the world. According to advices here the Soviet Commissariat of Finance is now considering a plan to abolish the zero from the currency system.
The State bank, which has recently been reorganized by the Bolsheviks, is to be instructed to issue a new kind of money. One ruble of the bank's currency is to be exchanged for 10,000 rubles of the regular Soviet paper. As a result the fabulous fortunes of Soviet money will be in the course of time deflated to one ten thousandth of their mathematical sums in the new currency.
If the scheme works out the prices of commodities and foreign money will automatically drop to reasonable figures. At the present time a dollar sells for about 150,000 Soviet rubles. Under the new scheme of things it will sell for fifteen rubles issued by the State bank. A pound of bread which costs at the present time 8,000 rubles will drop to eighty kopecks of the new money. And so on down the line.
While the technical preparations for the new plan are being worked out, the Soviet government already put into effect a law offering from 5 to 6 per cent interest a month on all accounts deposited at the State bank. This enormous rate of interest-amounting to 60 and 70 per cent a year--is designed to coax the tons of paper money hoarded by peasants and to gradually re-establish a system of credits. As long as the peasants hold their store of colored paper souvenirs it will be difficult to accomplish any financial deflation.
The financial problem of Russia is now regarded as chiefly psychological in character. The peasants of Russia have acquired a superstitious regard for big figures--even if they don't mean anything. What the government hopes to do is to gradually wean them away from this psychology and get them to accept smaller figures.
One class of Russia's population which will be immensely thankful if the deflation schemes prove successful are the bookkeepers and the paymasters. The bookkeepers are now staggering under an avalanche of zeros in their addition columns. Trained under the old notions of balancing their accounts to the last kopeck, they have had to resort to logarithm tables for their stupendous calculations. As for the paymasters, they have long ago had to fall back upon wagons to carry the payrolls from the Soviet printing presses to the factories.