Word: franc
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Currency reflects the image of the country," said Pinay. "When the franc has regained its position, France will soon recover its rank...
More surprising was the reaction in the country. From the ornate rostrum of the Chamber, beneath the stone-eyed gaze of Attic beauties, the prosaic tannery-man from St. Chamond ticked off the things he proposed to do: fight inflation, which had shrunk the franc to one twenty-fifth of its prewar value. Bring down prices, not by dirigisme (the Frenchman's word for government controls) but by persuading the big industrialists and the countless Antoine Pinays of France to be content with more reasonable profit margins. Balance the budget, not by his predecessors' resort to higher taxes...
Better Than Orson. Suddenly Pinay was a hero. Frenchmen began to compare him with Raymond Poincaré, who won fame in the 1920s not because he had been both President and Premier of France, but because he had saved the franc. In newsreel theaters, flashes of the dignified little man in plain double-breasted suit and the homburg provoked wild applause-"the first politician since De Gaulle who has received spontaneous applause," reported an impressed minister after an afternoon at the movies. At the autograph exchange in the gardens of the Palais Royal, the signature of Antoine Pinay went...
Waste of Time & Money. These homely activities made sense to the France that bred Antoine Pinay-not the American tourist's France of roasted chestnuts and rhinestoned poodles on the Champs-Ely-sées, "Allo darleeng" in the Place Pigalle, pressed duck at the Tour d'Argent, bikinis at Biarritz and baccarat at Nice-but the provincial France of hard-scraped farms, gnarled vineyards, smudgy little factories; of closefisted small shopkeepers, scuff-knuckled farmers and black-stockinged bakers' daughters. It is a France tradition-bound, slow to change, as stolid, solid and unspectacular as the pallid...
...former Lana Marconi. In the role of plaintiff, Guitry charged that wife No. 4 had continued to use the name Madame Guitry, which led to "much confusion," particularly when wife No. 5 kept getting No. 4's bills. Guitry asked the court to award him 20,000 francs ($60) every time Geneviève used his name. Said Geneviève in defense: Sacha had said when they were married, "Now you have my name forever." The court agreed with Guitry and awarded him symbolic damages in the amount of one franc...