Word: franc
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...does not care. Her response to hopelessness is a drink and a shrug. She lets herself be picked up by a rich young man. After they have slept together, it is clear that he expects to pay her; but with a fine gesture she takes some wadded franc notes from her purse, drops them on the bed and leaves...
That correction is indicative of the frenzy with which corporations, banks and other holders of dollars are stampeding to unload them. The selling has driven the dollar down 19% against the German mark, 27% against the Japanese yen and 34% against the Swiss franc in the past year. Washington seems incapable of stopping the slump; even optimistic statements by the White House nowadays often have a perverse effect. Last week, for example, President Carter said at his news conference that congressional passage at long last of his battered energy legislation should trim the U.S. trade deficit and bolster the dollar...
...making profits out of the irrationality, which they blame on their clients. Asks André Scaillet, chief money trader in Europe for First National Bank of Chicago: "Can you tell me if it's logical to have a 7½% [downward] movement of the dollar against the Swiss franc in a single day? It's out of this world!" Money traders worry quite as much as any finance minister about what the drop in the world's central trading currency is doing to the global structure of finance. Says Michel Grare, trader for Credit Lyonnais, a major...
...company quite probably will immediately sell $1 million for as many yen as it can get, with the dol lars to be delivered in 30 days. U.S.-based multinationals do essentially the same thing. Hercules Inc., a major chemical company, in 1971 negotiated a five-year loan in Swiss francs, on terms that appeared to be favorable. But by 1976, the dollar had plunged so much against the franc that Hercules had to shell out twice as many dollars as it had bargained for to meet the 7% interest and repay the principal (both denominated in Swiss francs). Ever since...
...checks have doubled in the past year and estimates that 25% of the purchases are pure speculation. Nor is it only a poor man's game. Executive Vice President Otto E. Roethenmund recalls one customer who bought between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of Swiss franc checks early in the summer - candidly telling the staff that he had no intention of going to Switzerland. Says Roethenmund: "To my knowledge the gentleman still owns them, so he has an appreciation...