Word: franc
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...their hair, and he managed to find a bed to sleep in only five times in 72 days. Finally, on July 30, he chugged into Paris-the winner by almost four weeks. His circumnavigation cost more than five months and $8,600-every penny, yen, ruble, mark and franc of which Schuster carefully computed in his stained, penciled notebook...
...Bank for International Settlements was the occasion for a somber review of the past year's dizzying dislocations in world finance. Last fall the pound was devalued. Four months later came the speculative attack on the dollar that resulted in abandonment of the London gold pool. More recently, France's upheaval put unexpected pressures on the franc. "You can't tell the difference between monetary crisis and noncrisis any more," concluded one official at Basel. "Now it's crisis all the time...
With three key national currencies in varying degrees of difficulty, some fancy financial footwork has been necessary. To fortify the franc, France earlier this month was forced to draw $745 million from the International Monetary Fund, the country's first such loan since 1958. The next day Britain followed suit by tapping the IMF for credits totaling $1.4 billion...
WHAT ever happened to la grandeur? For ten years France appeared on the world scene like a golden phoenix miraculously resuscitated from the ashes of the Fourth Republic, the agony of the Algerian war, and the long shame of the Vichy collaboration with Hitler. The man who accomplished this miracle of recovery was Charles de Gaulle, who in 1958 took over a nation with a mere $19 million left in its treasury and even less moral credit around the world. He restored both the franc and France's prestige. He also restored French pride: even casual visitors in the years...
Much of what ailed Gaullist France was economic. Under De Gaulle, the gross national product has more than doubled, from $49 billion in 1958 to about $108 billion in 1967?at the cost of much stress. De Gaulle hoarded gold, attacked the dollar, and did his best to keep the franc invulnerable. The nation's growth rate, which had climbed above 7% in the early 1960s, last year sank to about 3.5%. Consumer prices have shot up 39% since 1958 v. only 18% for the U.S. For a while, the workers shared in the fruits of Gaullism, and many bought...