Word: franc
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Paris turned euphoric after the agreement was announced. The franc rallied in international trading and stocks rose on the Paris Bourse. French Finance Minister Jean-Pierre Fourcade boasted that the deal would mean "fabulous sums of money for our industry." The agreement, however, is bound to disturb other nations. Washington had been urging Western industrial nations to work together in arranging deals with the oil producers rather than proceed bilaterally. Moreover, the sale of nuclear technology does not appear to be limited by strict safeguards against Iran's developing atomic weapons. Thus other Persian Gulf countries, which already fear...
...mark, in fact, is no longer an ordinary currency; it has become the de facto leader of a whole block of currencies issued by countries that make up an unofficial "Deutsche Mark zone." Include the Dutch guilder, the Belgian franc, the Luxembourg franc, the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian kroner, the Swiss franc and the Austrian schilling. They tend to rise and fall with the mark, so the mark's strength has pushed the value of the dollar down against all of them...
...dollar's true strength or weakness against other European currencies is difficult to judge because of a series of special circumstances. The greenback has dropped just a bit against the French franc because Paris is deliberately holding the value of the franc down in order to gain a trade advantage over other countries. The Italian lira is in trouble as usual but even so, it has gained against the dollar since January-though only because the Bank of Italy has been spending as much as $100 million a day to prop up the lira's price...
...There is no heir to Gaullism. Georges Pompidou's death has ended the lineage. It is finished." So declared Socialist Party Leader Francçois Mitterrand, 57, who stands a reasonable chance of breaking Gaullism's 16-year monopoly of the presidency of the Fifth Republic. With twelve candidates running to succeed Pompidou in the May 5 election, public opinion polls last week showed that Socialist Mitterrand, who also has the support of France's formidable Communist Party, is now favored by 40% of the voters. Most of the Gaullist and middle-of-the-road vote...
While busy wooing middle-of-the-road voters, Mitterrand has managed to becloud the crucial issue of what radical changes his presidency might bring. In foreign policy, he has distanced himself from his Communist partners by declaring: "France belongs to the Western world, the Atlantic world." He has said that his dealings with the U.S. would not be "so very different" from those of the current regime "but would be less abrasive." On domestic issues, he has downplayed parts of the Socialist-Communist platform that call for greater nationalization of industry and for a crash housing program by asserting that...