Word: drachmae
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...June 2000, though, Greece was lucky enough to join that club. By the skin of its teeth, it met the criteria for admission to Europe's new currency union. First, the drachma's value was fixed to that of hard-money countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and its long decline against the dollar slowed. Then in 2002, the drachma exited the currency stage, giving way to the euro...
...fury was directed at Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, who two weeks earlier had introduced an economic austerity plan. With its call for a 15% devaluation of the Greek drachma, wage curbs, new taxes, import controls and cuts in public spending, the plan was designed to ease the country's roughly $6 billion budget deficit, its $3 billion balance of payments deficit and its $14 billion foreign debt. Despite the resulting labor confrontation, the government refuses to give way. Since the real impact of the austerity will not begin to be felt for months, Papandreou will probably win this round. Last...
...Routinized agricultural taxation in China was well established by the Zhou dynasty (c. 1027-221 B.C.E.); the earliest Roman taxes, the portoria, were customs duties on imports and exports. The Athenians had a monthly poll tax, the metoikion, on foreigners (people whose parents were not both Athenian) of one drachma for men and half a drachma for women, while their contemporary Persians levied a tax called jizya on all non-Muslims living in Muslim-ruled areas. In 11th-century Britain, rising property taxes propelled Lady Godiva to ride the streets nude, inspiring popular reform as well as aristocratic candy. Meanwhile...
...private jet and a few cars, his hockey team, his football team and his stake in a movie company. His coin business is in legal limbo. Creditors are queuing up to sue him. Soon McNall, the former boy tycoon, may not have an old -- or even a plugged -- drachma to call...
...skepticism of the Bundesbank is understandable. Its president, Karl Otto Pohl, and his cohort are still wrestling with an unfinished European Monetary System, involving commitments to support newcomers like the Greek drachma and the Portuguese escudo. But those countries, whatever their problems, are going concerns, while East Germany, whatever its potential, is nearly a basket case...