Word: dollarization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When lawyers in the Pennzoil-Texaco multibillion-dollar battle turned to the Texas Supreme Court, they were not approaching strangers. Since 1980 Houston Attorney Joseph Jamail and his firm, Pennzoil's victorious counsel, doled out $248,000 in campaign contributions to the justices. As for Russell McMains, Texaco's chief appellate lawyer in Texas, he has donated some $40,000 to members of the high bench, and his former Corpus Christi firm gave $150,000 more. Such cozy bench-polishing tactics are not illegal, since Texas is one of only nine states where virtually all judges are chosen in partisan...
Ushered in with upbeat forecasts and a general mood of economic confidence, 1987 went out on a harsh note of uncertainty and apprehension. Last week the dollar went the way of the New Year's Eve ball in Times Square -- down. Its descent pummeled the stock market and fanned fears about America's economic future. Retailers said consumers were cautious during the Christmas shopping season. The usual last-minute buying surge averted a disaster, yet sales in November and December were lackluster at best...
Anxiety over the dollar quashed a year-end stock rally. Just two weeks ago the Dow Jones industrial average broke 2000 for the first time since Nov. 2. But last week the Dow sank 61 points. It closed 1987 at 1938.83, up 43 points for the year...
Most troubling was the continuing decline of the dollar, which hit its lowest level in more than 40 years against the Japanese yen and the West German mark. On New Year's Eve, the dollar fetched only 121 yen, vs. 159 yen a year ago. The plunge was especially unsettling because it came less than a week after the Group of Seven (the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany) issued a statement saying the dollar had fallen far enough. The central banks of some of these nations have been buying dollars heavily in exchange markets, but currency...
...markets also shrugged off a statement issued by the White House. Its major point: "The United States wants to see stability in the dollar." Despite such jawboning, the world's moneymen seem convinced that the dollar cannot strengthen as long as the U.S. trade deficit, estimated at a record $175 billion in 1987, keeps rising. Says Japanese Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa: "There may be a feeling that one cannot quite believe that the U.S. trade balance is really going to improve...