Word: franc
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There was grumbling over the third devaluation measure of Finance Minister René Mayer-the calling in of all 5,000-franc notes. One farmer burned his, rather than turn them in and invite questioning. Black-marketeers and others, forced for the first time to disclose their holdings, scurried around selling their excess notes for as little as 200 francs. But honest Frenchmen lined up with their 5,000-franc notes and turned them...
Those with small sums were paid off at once in smaller bills. Big accounts were frozen; how or when they will be paid off, Mayer has not decided. At week's end, Mayer estimated that all of the 330 billion worth of 5,000-franc notes, one third of all currency outstanding, had been turned in or destroyed, and much water squeezed out of the currency inflation...
After an all-night session of the Assembly, René Mayer partly appeased the Socialists. He proposed, as a blow at black marketeers, to withdraw all 5,000-franc notes from circulation. The balky Socialists swung into line. The Assembly adjourned...
...were about to perish for lack of air," said Finance Minister Rene Mayer last week. "We had to smash the window with a single blow." Mayer chiefly meant that, without devaluation of the franc (TIME, Feb. 2), French recovery would have been stifled through inability to sell goods abroad. But for a few days last week, Rene Mayer and Premier Robert Schuman had French Socialists at their throats. As advocates of dirigisme (directed economy), Socialists did not like the breeze of free enterprise that threatened to blow through the smashed window...
Meanwhile, René Mayer's economic window-smashing had bewildered and frightened Frenchmen. Prices of oranges, chickens, beans, eggs skittered nervously upward. Many a thrifty soul with a sockful of 5,000-franc notes spent an anxious two days before he learned that the government would redeem his notes in full-if he could prove that he came by them legally. Said a Paris policeman: "This is a bitter pill, but we will have to swallow it. Let's hope it will save France...