Word: bonne
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Many factors were involved in De Gaulle's decision. One of them was pride. The West Germans had failed to mask their glee at France's discomfiture. In fact, the French first learned of the devaluation discussions in Bonn through press reports quoting West Germany's Finance Minister Franz-Josef Strauss. After the final session, Strauss implied that the devaluation was a foregone conclusion. "The French government has to decide the extent of it," he said...
Still, the major concession that De Gaulle wanted could not be extracted from Bonn. As the Germans well knew, a revaluation-induced increase in the cost of their goods sold abroad would almost certainly have pinched corporate profits at the same time that it increased unemployment. And what made both effects particularly untimely as far as Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger's government was concerned was the fact that national elections will be held next year. As Kiesinger publicly declared, "The ills of the sick should not be cured at the expense of the healthy...
French and German intransigence sent Europe's monetary system reeling toward the brink of crisis. On the day that Schiller, chairman of the Group of Ten, summoned the world's leading central bankers and finance ministers to an emergency meeting in Bonn, demand for gold in London hit the highest level since March. In New York, sterling hit rock bottom at $2.38. In Swiss money markets, it slipped even lower. The dollar, by comparison, weathered the crisis fairly well, reflecting general confidence that the U.S. was finally doing something convincing about its balance of payments problem...
...Whatever Bonn's economic planning achievements, however, there are other, less tangible factors that have aided the German recovery. As the Bild Zeitung somewhat pompously observed last week in comparing the Federal Republic to France and Britain: "If we went on strikes and took breaks as often as the others, we too would have to go out and borrow, the only question being: From whom? If we had so suicidal a trade union system as the British, our mark would be just as tuberculous as the pound. If we had as many unsolved social problems as the French, then...
...than Britain was when it devalued last year. Britain's gold and foreign-currency reserves had dwindled to a dangerously low level. France, despite the recent heavy losses, still has $4.1 billion in gold and reserves, and in addition to that the $2 billion credits made available in Bonn by the Ten and nearly another $1 billion open to it in Basel's Bank of International Settlements. Taken together, those are potent resources to throw into a speculative battle...