In 1997, Milo Đukanović took control of Montenegro's ruling party, the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro, and began severing political ties with Serbia. He blamed the policies of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević for the overall decline of the Montenegrin economy. Resurgent inflation led the Montenegrin government to "dollarize" the economy, adopting the German mark as its dominant currency. These economic policies also led to a revision of the relationship between the two countries from a federal republic to a much looser political union of Serbia and Montenegro, in which the Montenegrin government assumed responsibility for its own economic policies.