Word: franc
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...Franc Talk...
...nation's most spectacular feat has been its economic and fiscal comeback. The phenomenal upsurge that has become known as the "French miracle" has in five years turned near bankruptcy to boom, made the once-fragile franc one of the world's sturdiest currencies. Soon after De Gaulle came to power in 1958, the nation's reserves were so close to exhaustion that he had no recourse but to devalue the franc. Offered two alternative proposals, the President, who is as innocent of economics as Konrad Adenauer or John Kennedy, gambled on a "strong plan." It wrung...
...moment, Touré's overriding concern is to end his quarrel with France's Charles de Gaulle, who still smarts over the way Guinea rejected membership in the French Community and chose independence in 1958. In retaliation, departing French civil servants yanked phones from the walls, smashed light fixtures, and dumped Guinea's records into the Atlantic. Guinea also quit the franc zone, to its near ruin. Now it hopes to win readmission when a French delegation arrives in Guinea soon for talks. Expected price: indemnification for French-owned banks, insurance companies, trading firms and bauxite mines...
...Death. She flutters past a market, where carcasses of cattle hang from brutal hooks and the butchers inspect her expertly, as though she were a carcass too. She flutters to her manager (Dominique Davray), a hard-faced businesswoman who comforts her meticulously but unemotionally, as though smoothing a 500-franc note. She flies back to her gilded cage in time to preen and twitter for the man who keeps her for the same reasons he keeps a second car: convenience and ostentation. Her songwriters arrive, and the canary mechanically warbles a few love songs she has sung a hundred times...
...really nervous there is nothing quite as safe as a coded number account, since nobody but a Swiss bank's director and one or two top officers ever learns the identity of its owner. So stringent are the rules protecting depositors-bankers who violate them risk 20,000-franc fines ($4,577 ) and six months in jail-that relatives of Iraq's King Feisal could not touch his account after his assassination, and Argentina's deposed Dictator Juan Peron is still unable to get at the $60 million fortune reportedly cached by his late wife...