Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Extreme Consequences. The French maintained that Germany's modern, competitive industry had gained so much by the Common Market that it was now time for France's efficient, highly productive farm bloc to get some gravy too. But Germany's farmers are so highly subsidized that any agricultural agreement would mean a severe slash in German farm prices-an unpleasant political prospect for West Germany's new Chancellor Ludwig Erhard...
Alone among France's black African territories, Guinea chose total independence rather than Charles de Gaulle's offer of continued "association." When French aid was cut off, Toure turned instinctively to the Soviet bloc, whose economic embrace rapidly made Guinea a kind of cold-war Erewhon. In re turn for its prized pineapples, bananas and other produce, Moscow sent tropical Guinea overpriced, superannuated snowplows, prefabricated housing units that its workmen cannot assemble, and a plant to produce shaved ice, which melts instantly in Conakry's savage heat...
...Wohllebengasse (Alley of Good Living) lies one of the key outposts of the Communist drive for East-West trade. It is Garant Insur ance, a Russian-owned-and-operated firm set up under Austrian law, and its business is supplying coverage for Western businessmen who trade with the Soviet bloc. In the five years of its existence, Garant has seen its premium income soar from less than $600,000 to $4,000,000 this year; it now does business with some of the best-known manufacturers in Western Europe...
Westerners who want to trade with the Soviet bloc often find it difficult to get sufficient insurance against credit defaults or loss or damage to their goods after they cross the Iron Curtain. Western governments generally discourage or prohibit giving Communist customers anything but the most limited credit. And Western insurance firms, for the most part, consider such business neither safe nor profitable. One of the few U.S. firms to try it-a 15-company consortium-went out of business more than six months...
Garant thus helps obtain for Soviet-bloc countries Western credit that otherwise would not be extended, and also pulls in the Western currency that Russia needs in her trade offensive. But in the "third-man" atmosphere of Vienna, few believe that its sole concern is insurance. It twice got into trouble for trying to buy into Western European projects in violation of Austrian law, and strong suspicion persists that it owns sizable shares of stock in several Western European manufacturers. It has ties with about 40 insurance agents in the West, has pressed the Austrian government for the right...