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/Every zone of Germany is plagued with the black market, an institution which absorbs so much of what little the U. S. zone produces that it has become a serious threat to economic recovery.  American occupation soldiers are themselves the chief suppliers of cigarettes, long the favored medium of exchange.
/In Berlin, as well as in the American zone, the German police stage periodic raids.  But though these raids have given German policemen a chance to express their aggressiveness and authority in roughening up their fellow countrymen, the raids have had little effect.