Word: golds
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Even more impressive was the startling success that Finance Minister Antoine Pinay's public loan (TIME, June 23) was having among a people traditionally wary of government securities. In a single day last week Frenchmen parted with a record $18 million in hoarded gold to buy the new bonds, and by week's end the amount of gold converted into bonds totaled $52 million. "If this keeps up for a few weeks," grinned Pinay, "we may have to enlarge the vaults of the Bank of France...
True or not, there is plenty of pressure from all sides. London's Economist calls for a 300% hike in the price of gold to bring it in line with other increases, and every miner hopes for a price boost to pay rising costs and improve profits. A more important argument for a higher gold price is that it will help foreign trade. Financial men argue that the world simply does not have enough gold. South Africa's W. J. Busschau, manager of the New Consolidated Gold Fields, Ltd. and one of the world's leading gold...
...Government is against any such price boost, arguing that the main gainers would be large gold holders-the U.S., France, West Germany, Switzerland-while the losers would be the underdeveloped nations of the Middle East and Asia, which have enough trouble as it is earning hard currencies to buy gold...
...greatest gainer of all would be Soviet Russia, with production estimated as high as $600 million annually and gold stocks at $8 billion. Some experts, such as Manhattan's Franz Pick, expect the Reds to turn their gold into an economic weapon by using it to set up a gold-backed foreign trade ruble. Last week rumors flooded Wall Street that the Russians were up to precisely that. The advantages, said Pick, would be tremendous, since it would give the Russians a "respectable ruble" and make a sensational impression on underdeveloped countries...
...anger, an acquaintance once said, was "to know the electric chair without death." The danger signal was an open-palmed slap, slap, slap on the bald dome, often followed by the saliva-flecked roar, "You are a broken reed I" If Gulbenkian was something of a solid gold Scrooge, he also had Scroogian fears. According to Young, the sordid 1920 murder of a Manhattan pawnbroker named Gulbenkian, no kin, scared him out of ever visiting the U.S. He reputedly kept a ton and a half of gold in his London safes, presumably against a rainy day. An electrified barricade surrounded...