World Of Business On Your Marks . . .

By ROBERT BALL

Get set? Maybe. Go? Not yet. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's call for immediate talks about making the West German mark the common currency of both Germanys has added a new ingredient to the bubbling brew of unification discussion. Like Kohl's other efforts to seize the initiative, it drew a mixed reception. One skeptical voice was that of the Deutsche Bundesbank, legally responsible for protecting the value of the currency. But Kohl's proposal also jolted the average West German into awareness that unification has its price, payable in deutsche marks.

To be sure, Kohl is calling for talks, not presenting a ready plan. But his sense of urgency upstaged his own Economics Ministry, which only recently proffered a three-year, three-stage plan for integrating the East German economy into that of the Federal Republic. Since full monetary union is the capstone, not the cornerstone, of any economic union, Kohl's proposal is at least partly exhortatory. It is consistent with his view that unification must mean the incorporation of East Germany into the European Community, not the creation of a neutral Fourth Reich. What is remarkable is the rush. Kohl has obviously become convinced that without visible assurances of unification, East Germany will simply empty itself westward.

The skepticism of the Bundesbank is understandable. Its president, Karl Otto Pohl, and his cohort are still wrestling with an unfinished European Monetary System, involving commitments to support newcomers like the Greek drachma and the Portuguese escudo. But those countries, whatever their problems, are going concerns, while East Germany, whatever its potential, is nearly a basket case.

A one-for-one replacement of marks (East) with marks (West) would be wildly inflationary because the G.D.R., like other East European countries, suffers from acute concealed inflation -- huge amounts of paper money and no goods to buy. Even a replacement at current black market rates of 7 or even 10 to 1 would be like mainlining heroin. Before any monetary unification, the excess purchasing power represented by those East marks has to be mopped up and a better balance of supply and demand established. One way would be for East Germany to destroy savings by a radical currency reform.

There are precedents for monetary integration, though usually conquerors simply repudiated the old currency and introduced their own. Perhaps the aptest parallel with East Germany's situation is the 1957 reintegration into West Germany of the Saar, after it had been incorporated into the French franc area for eleven years. But both sides were operating with realistic exchange rates; besides, the Saar then had 1 million inhabitants, while East Germany still has some 16 million.

It is emphatically not for outsiders to tell Germans where German interests lie. Nevertheless, if economic concerns are primary, a disinterested observer might conclude that the Germans in the G.D.R. and in the West would be better served by an arrangement under which, with ample Western aid, East Germany evolved into a state like Austria -- free, sovereign, neutral and prosperous, its economy and currency closely but pragmatically linked to West Germany. Many such links already exist between the two Germanys. If what is motivating the exodus from East Germany is not a nationalist frenzy -- which heaven forfend -- or fear of a hard-line backlash, but rather the desire for a new job and a used Volkswagen, then there are ways of satisfying those wishes without upsetting the international balance. All take time, however, and Kohl fears time is running short. His message to the restive East Germans: stay where you are; help is on the way.