Word: franc
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...dollar. Last year U.S. imports ran considerably above U.S. exports, with the result that $2.2 billion in gold and half a billion in dollars flowed out of the U.S. into foreign treasuries. Armed with increased gold reserves and with the knowledge that the German mark or Swiss franc is just about as desirable a currency as the inflation-dented U.S. dollar, all of Europe's trading nations felt strong enough to accompany Britain into convertibility and thereby to divide the risk of doing...
...Squeeze. All this, despite the fact that Britain has long been contemplating external convertibility, had the effect of putting a painful squeeze on France. Yet Pinay had not opposed the British and Germans; in fact, it was he who proposed advancing the date to Dec. 27. With the franc officially valued at 420 to the dollar but selling in the free market for 470 or worse, General de Gaulle's government was already faced with one harsh fact: unless the official value of the franc were brought into line with its true value, French products would be too highpriced...
...long and somber Cabinet meetings last week, De Gaulle and his Cabinet wrestled with these awkward realities. At last, hot on the heels of the London announcement, Antoine Pinay proclaimed France's course. Presumably buoyed up by promises of financial underwriting from West Germany, France followed Britain's lead, made the franc, too, externally convertible. At the same time the De Gaulle government devalued the franc by an unexpected 17.5%, established a new rate of 493.7 to the dollar...
...final, psychological effort to increase the prestige of France's wavering currency (which has now been devalued seven times since the end of World War II), De Gaulle and his ministers proposed to introduce gradually, between now and 1960, a new "heavy franc," equivalent to 100 present francs and roughly close in value (20?) to two of the world's most respected monetary units-the German Deutsche Mark and the Swiss franc. (Frenchmen, said Pinay, will soon get used to dropping two zeros from all their figures...
Having voted power to De Gaulle, France relaxed under blue skies and in gentle fall weather. At Longchamps the crowds were out for the running of the race of the year, the 40 million-franc Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Men in morning coats and grey cravats walked amid the drift of chestnut leaves with elegant women in Balenciaga and Dior gowns and outsize souffle hats. A few miles across town in the cavernous glass-roofed Grand Palais, thousands of other Frenchmen thronged the annual Salon de l'Auto to stare with passionate absorption at the chromium...