Examines the financial and economic challenges facing the new Polish state, the Second Republic, including the integration of different institutional and monetary systems and the need for monetary stabilization. The postwar Polish inflation, which morphed into galloping inflation and then hyperinflation, had its origins in fiscal deficits directly monetized by the central bank. But there was a substantial difference of opinion on the best approach to monetary stabilization: either fiscal stabilization, or assistance from the outside through a foreign loan. Zygmunt Karpiński and Feliks Młynarski, the two men who decisively shaped the intellectual orientation of the new central bank, the Bank Polski (BP), emphasized the importance of a balanced budget as a prerequisite for monetary stabilization. They also conceived of introducing a new stable currency to run concurrently with the old depreciating currency: the new currency, the złoty, had in its name an explicit reference to gold.