Germany’s shadow currency?
There are still plenty of deutschmarks out there in case Germany decides to pull the plug on the euro.
On the tenth anniversary of the euro, there are still places in Germany where the deutschmark is accepted as legal tender. Apparently this is not an exercise in nationalism or nostalgia.
Germany is a country where people save – as opposed to the U.S. – and there are still billions of deutschmarks in banks, under mattresses, wherever.
According to this interesting report by Deutsche Welle, C & A department stores and Deutsche Telekom's pay phones all accept marks, along with a number of independent retailers around the country.
There are more than 13.3 billion dm's that still have not been converted to euros. That's around 26 billion euros ($34 billion) at the official exchange rate. I suppose if the euro breaks up – and I still say it won't – then Germans won't be too far out of pocket when the mark returns.
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