Genoa Economic and Financial Conference (1922)
The Economic and Financial Conference was a formal conclave of representatives from 34 European countries held in the ancient Palazzo San Giorgio of Genoa, Italy, from 10 April to 19 May 1922.
Germany and the Soviet Union predictably expressed loud dissent and stole the limelight by negotiating a separate bilateral agreement on the conference's sidelines, the Treaty of Rapallo.
[4] The formal proposal was made at Cannes on 6 January 1922 in the form of a draft resolution calling for such a conference that was presented by Lloyd George and was approved unanimously the same date.
[5] Lloyd George told the British Parliament that the primary intent of the conference was to provide for the "reconstruction of economic Europe, devastated and broken into fragments by the desolating agency of war".
The recognized medium of commerce, exchange based upon currency, has become almost worthless and unworkable; vast areas, upon which Europe has hitherto depended for a large proportion of its food supplies and its raw material, completely destroyed for all purposes of commerce; nations, instead of cooperating to restore, broken up by suspicions and creating difficulties and new artificial restrictions; great armies ready to march, and nations already overburdened with taxation having to bear the additional taxation which the maintenance of these huge armaments to avoid suspected dangers renders necessary.
The French believed that if Germany was allowed to skirt the severe financial obligations detailed in the peace treaty, its economic rise would be massively accelerated, and its political and military hegemony on the continent would be rapidly restored.
[11] Germany's position came to be regarded as reasonably correct by British, American and other policymakers despite quiet indications from even some German authorities that some substantial portion of the reparations bill could be safely managed.
[12] British, American and Swiss bankers were adamant that necessary loans would not be available until a final achievable reparations bill and repayment schedule could be agreed upon by all of the main parties in the dispute.
[14] The apparent softening the economic terms of the peace, which had taken place at Cannes, had led to the toppling of the government of the French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and threatened the conference by leaving his successor, Raymond Poincaré, with little appetite for participation.
[17] The second potential hurdle to holding the Genoa Conference surrounded participation of the new Bolshevik government of Russia, as the United States and most of Europe did not maintain formal diplomatic relations with the regime and harboured economic claims against it.
That inconvenient situation had been effectively set aside by the Supreme Council itself, which approved a formal resolution at its meeting of 10 January 1922 that invited Soviet participation and called upon the Bolsheviks to submit a list of delegates and support staff seeking to attend so that safe-conduct passes for travel and accommodation could be arranged.
[20] Among the propositions formulated at the conference was the proposal that central banks make a partial return to the gold standard, which had been dropped to print money to pay for the war.
