Word: bullion
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...19th century system whereby each nation set the value of its currency by weight of gold, and guaranteed to convert paper money to bullion on demand. Honoring that commitment forced nations into ruthless de flations, panics, recessions. Under today's gold-exchange standard, which was evolved in the '20s to economize on the need for the metal, central banks hold some reserves in foreign currencies convertible to gold (such as the dollar). -Tinkering daily with the price of gold during the months before that, F.D.R. liked to decide on a figure in a huddle with Acting Treasury Secretary...
...result was the greatest gold rush in history. Almost all of the demand fell upon the London gold pool, through which the central banks of the U.S., Britain, West Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands had for 6½years maintained the free-market price of bullion at its $35-per-oz. monetary level. Between Britain's Nov. 18 devaluation and March 15, when the London market was closed at the U.S.'s request, the buying stampede drained the pool of some $2.5 billion of gold - nearly 2½times the amount mined in California during...
...savings to gold bars. There was even a run in Hong Kong on gold jewelry. All told, between $1 billion and $2.5 billion in gold may have changed hands within ten days in London-as much as 10% of the total gold in the seven-nation Gold Pool, whose bullion reserves are the cushion for the $35 international price of gold. No estimate was possible of all the other trading in gold around the world, except that it was colossal...
...some Communist Eastern European countries, had undoubtedly joined in to protect themselves. More in sorrow than in greed, European corporations moved into the buying to hedge their foreign-currency holdings. So did some wealthy Americans with numbered Swiss accounts, although it is illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold bullion...
...continuous and drawnout crisis," says Roy L. Reierson, senior vice president and chief economist of Manhattan's Bankers Trust Co. Last week Reierson added his voice to those demanding that the London gold pool be closed, and that the U.S. limit its $35-an-oz. sales of bullion to the settlement of debts with other countries. That "selective convertibility" recipe stops short of outright dollar devaluation be cause some gold would remain avail able at today's price. It would also keep U.S. gold losses to a minimum. The free-market price of gold would un doubtedly soar...