Word: franc
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Died. Emile Francqui, 72, Belgium's richest man and No. 1 hard money expert; in Brussels. A burly, morose and solitary man. Francqui put aside his gifted money-making (banks, copper) whenever Belgium reached a financial crisis, twice devalued the Belgian franc, invented the foreign exchange medium of the belga (five Belgian francs). Europe called him "The Mystery Man," and "The Copper King of the Congo," where as a young captain he saved for Belgium from the British the territory in which one of the world's richest copper mines, Katanga, was later discovered...
Ruthless in defense of the franc, M. Tannery breathed the word which recently barred from France smart Lieut. Colonel Francis Norris, a suave British bear raider. Last week a nod from Governor Tannery expelled another British bear, 27-year-old Serge Rubenstein, brilliant Cambridge economist and founder of Paris' Franco-Asiatic Bank. A third young man who sold too many francs short to suit Gold Cock Tannery was Bertrand Coles Neidecker, fugitive U. S. founder of Paris' closed Travelers Bank (TIME...
...reason for hanging Pierre Laval: the Premier's drastic wage slashes, affecting huge numbers of already underpaid Frenchmen. Chief reason for not hanging Laval: his equally drastic efforts to force down food prices, rents, etc., along with wages in a great "Equality of Sacrifice" to keep the French franc at its present gold value. Last week Premier Laval, who locked up his Cabinet for 14 hours while the Ministers wrangled over and finally approved his first 28 emergency decrees (TIME, July 29), locked them up again and got action on some 40 more decrees. As before, these were rushed...
...Today the salvation of the franc demands sacrifices from every Frenchman. The State debt has grown from 260 milliards [billions] to 340 milliards of francs [$22,555,000,000]. To balance our budget requires equality of sacrifice from rich & poor, high & low. My Government stands for such equality of sacrifice, for solid currency and for domestic peace...
Died. Mme Marthe Hanau, 49, French arch-swindler; of pneumonia following a suicide attempt (poison); in a Paris prison hospital after serving most of a three-year term for fraud. Through her newspaper, Gazette du Franc, she gave financial "tips" to small investors who lost more than $4,000,000 when her pyramid of holding companies collapsed in December 1928 in the greatest scandal France had known since...