Word: francs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Irony and Narrative. Next to Miro and Dubuffet, the oldest painter in the show is Jean Helion. Having been one of the leading abstract artists in France between the wars, Helion returned to figuration in 1947. "I looked through my studio window," he recalls, "and I found that the outside world was more beautiful than my picture." He is now 71 and at the height of his powers. What pervades his paintings is a wry and original sense of human stance and gesture; under the cubist planes of the surface lies a marked appetite for the sensuality of commonplace things...
...forces of supply and demand in foreign exchange markets and not, as in the past, by government fiat. The system seemed to work well for a while. Now, however, a growing number of Europeans are concluding that floating rates have been a failure. The harshest critic has been France, which last week ceased to allow the franc to float freely against all other money. Instead, it will rejoin a European fixed-rate scheme known as the snake-that ties the values of seven currencies to each other...
...exporting nations contend that they need a big price boost because Western inflation and the decline in the dollar have eaten away the purchasing power of the greenbacks that they receive by selling oil. In France, for example, the purchasing power of their dollars has dropped roughly 30% in the past nine months-about 10% because of French price increases, 20% because of a decline in the value of the dollar against the franc. This argument, of course, overlooks two screamingly obvious facts: a quintupling of oil prices since October 1973 has left the OPEC nations far ahead...
...American dollar has been declining irregularly on world money markets for the past five years, but never in the postwar period has its value against major European currencies sunk so low for so long. Since last September, the greenback has fallen roughly 13% against the Belgian franc, Dutch guilder and West German mark, and has lost 20% of its former worth in French and Swiss francs. Last week U.S. currency fell below the level of four francs to the dollar for the first time since 1973-and the consequences of its slump were making some disturbing waves...
...Germany last week for only 2.33 marks. The most immediate reason is that for months, American interest rates have been dropping, while in Europe rates were rising. Seeking the highest return, investors, including American-based multinational firms, have been dumping dollars and buying into currencies such as the franc. In France, the prime interest rate now is more than 12% v. as little...