To Warsaw

The economic turmoil that characterised independent Poland, indeed the whole of Europe, in the 1920s was exacerbated by the 1929 Crash. The subsequent depression in the United States devastated those economies that had relied on export-led growth, underpinned by the apparent prosperity of the US economy in the first decade after the First World War, or on foreign direct investment to sustain business investment. Among the most exposed countries in Europe was Poland. Kalecki was very aware of the connection between business conditions in particular countries and international capital flows in conditions of crisis. The link between them was, not through the struggle for markets and financing ‘enterprise’ or trade, but through deflation and forced indebtedness.