Word: boycotters
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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South Africa badly needs to sell gold to pay for its imports; but other nations have not been buying its bullion for their monetary reserves since 1968, when the U.S. persuaded central bankers to join a boycott. That move was part of a power play intended to blunt South Africa's campaign for an increase in the price of gold. U.S. officials hoped to force South Africa to dump its gold on free markets in London and Switzerland and thus drive the free-market price down to the $35-per-ounce level that prevails in deals between governments...
...syndicate, however, has been unable to take all the gold that South Africa has offered. The Bank of Portugal has broken the central-bank boycott and bought some of the rest at the official $35 price. The Lisbon bankers took about $145 million worth in 1968 and another $120 million worth early this year. Johannesburg moneymen also believe that South Africa has loaned some gold to other African nations...
Compromise Talk. In addition, central bankers strongly suspect that South Africa has deposited some of its gold in foreign banks and subtracted the deposits from its figures on gold reserves. That ploy would tend to make the boycott look even more ineffective than it is. British statistics show that $222 million in South African gold entered the U.K. last year. Most of it is probably to be found in South Africa's account at the Bank of England, which does not divulge what it is holding-but which has received South African gold ever since that country...
Although it is partially beating the boycott, South Africa needs to sell even more gold to pay for its foreign purchases. Its officials have begun informal talks with the U.S. for some kind of compromise. Under one plan previously proposed by the U.S., South Africa would sell all of its gold in free markets but could sell some to central banks at $35 if the free-market price dropped to that level or below...
Johannesburg bankers imply that as part of any such compromise ending to the boycott, South Africa would drop its insistence that the official $35 price be raised and the dollar thereby devalued. Any agreement would probably be denounced by political liberals in the U.S. as unconscionable aid to one of the world's most racist nations. But a deal that would dissipate doubts about the integrity of the dollar would obviously help...