Word: franc
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Said Paris' Franc-Tiretir: "No one is really an enemy of wine-in France-but it is hard to ask Frenchmen to drink more than their bellyful for the sole purpose of draining off the harvest surplus." Frenchmen, already the world's biggest consumers of alcoholic beverages (seven gals, per person per year, on a pure alcohol basis, v. one gal. per American), drank about 1.2 billion gals, of wine last year, 75% of what they put away in prewar years. Yet wine production was about the same as before the war (1.9 billion gals.), almost a third...
...order. Since Churchill's belt-tightening program, Britain's "free market" pound has risen from $2.35 in New York to close to the official rate of $2.80. West Germany's Deutsche mark has risen in value from 6? to around 22?, and is rivaling the Swiss franc for stability. Italy's lira, which sank as low as 915 to the dollar during 1948's fears of Communist election victories, is almost up to the official rate (625). The Benelux nations-Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg-established such a good postwar export trade that their stable currencies...
...cargoes of grain and nitrates out of Australia, Chile and San Francisco, round Cape Horn to their French home ports. From these ports come the homeless, hard-bitten men who man them-a surly lot, mostly shanghaied aboard by brothel-keepers to whom the poor fellows have lost every franc. As vicious as any man caught in this vicious cycle is Common Seaman Rolland, who is lugged aboard the good ship Galatéee, bloody-faced and fighting...
Finance: "Since the war, the franc has lost nine-tenths of its value...
...This compares with a 75% trade "liberalization" expected of solvent nations by OEEC, and the 99% free trade permitted by Italy. Italy's open door actually threatens its own recovery: in the first two months of 1953, its imports from EPU nations exceeded its exports by $67 million. France is in direr straits and $625 million in debt to EPU; there is strong talk of a new devaluation of the franc. Rome and Paris had both threatened to tighten import regulations to get themselves out of their jam. By making it easier for them to earn sterling, Butler...