Word: dollars
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cobbett, in A Journal of a Year's Residence in the United States. Excerpt: "I have just dined upon cold ham, cold veal, butter and cheese and a peach pye; nice clean room, well furnished, waiter clean and attentive, plenty of milk; and charge, a quarter of a dollar. I had not the face to pay the waiter a quarter of a dollar; but gave him half a dollar, and told him to keep the change...
This low-cost luxury flowed from no horn of plenty. It resulted from an Alice-in-Wonderland exchange situation. The official exchange rate is 6.5 Peruvian soles for one U.S. dollar. But because there are not enough dollars at this rate to meet the need, the visitor can sell his travelers' checks on the free market (which is not illegal) for anywhere from 10 to 20 soles...
...Peruvian who earns his wages in soles, the result is higher prices. Living costs have gone up about 100% in the last four years. But so long as the sol was cheap in relation to the dollar and prices did not catch up, foreigners could live better for less in Peru than in almost any other country in the world...
Worst of all, said Roberts, has been the U.S. adoption of "atomic-dollar diplomacy," the "strictly American" idea that in advancing international credits the banker should be permitted to call the borrower's political and economic shots. "Because you don't like Communism (Canadians don't like it either), you came up with the idea of using the dollar to 'contain' Russian expansion. . . . Because you do not like socialism, many of your leaders assert that the price of helping Britain, or giving the French a lift, must be an undertaking not to carry on ideological...
...dollar-short Europeans, such trading prospects were good news indeed. By week's end, the marriage of Paris and California fashions was sealed by negotiations for thousands of dollars in contracts...