Mefo bill

Uncommon card · No. 192597

A Mefo bill (sometimes written as MEFO bill; German: Mefo-Wechsel) was a six-month promissory note, drawn upon the dummy company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft ('Metallurgical Research Corporation'), devised by the German Central Bank President, Hjalmar Schacht, in 1934. These bills could be discounted by any German bank at any time, and these banks, in turn, could rediscount the bills at the Reichsbank at any time within the last three months of their earliest maturity. They therefore acted as a highly liquid means of payment to finance the Nazi German government's programme of rearmament, allowing them to rearm under the Treaty of Versailles. Mefo bills followed the scheme for which the Öffa bills were the blueprint. As Germany was rearming against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Nazi government needed a form of financing that did not leave a paper trail and allowed them to spend past the treaty terms on military rearmament. Importantly, Adolf Hitler had recently...

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