Word: greenback
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...shore up the battered dollar in November 1978, the Administration showed little concern about the gold boom. As long as gold buyers were not singling out dollars for heavy selling, the fever was viewed as a monetary nonevent. But this complacency faded rapidly late last week when the greenback plunged 2% in just one day against the West German mark, to the lowest it has been since last October. The weakness caught Washington unprepared. Said one Treasury official: "There simply isn't the mental horsepower in the White House to deal with this kind of problem. They are preoccupied...
Though part of the rise in European pay (and prices) when expressed in dollars reflects the slump in the value of the greenback, this does not explain all the difference. In real terms, incomes have simply risen much faster in Europe than in America. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.), between 1972 and 1977 the annual increase in the average hourly wage in the U.S. was less than 1% above the inflation rate. But in Europe, wages have stayed ahead of prices by much greater margins: more than 5% in France, Belgium, Norway...
Inflation has spread a financial virus of unwanted dollars to the economies of the nation's trading partners, turning the once mighty greenback into the sick man of international finance. Since 1970, some $650 billion has piled up in so-called Eurodollar accounts in banks overseas, and the threat is ever present that holders might stampede to sell their dollars. Since 1971, minipanics have led to the collapse of worldwide fixed exchange rates against the dollar, the slide of the dollar against gold and other precious metals, and the progressive disintegration of global confidence in the dollar itself...
...dollar. At the cartel's June meeting, which lifted average crude costs by 42%, to about $20 per bbl., even so-called moderate members warned that a 5% drop in the dollar's value could easily provoke another round of increases. In the past month the greenback has slumped by almost that much against strong foreign currencies, and several OPEC states are calling for an emergency meeting on prices as early as September in Vienna-well ahead of the next officially scheduled conference in December...
While gold is psychologically important, the fate of the dollar is far more vital to the U.S.−and the rest of the non-Communist countries, which use the greenback to settle most international trade deals. Even before Carter's actions last week, the dollar had been slipping, as some financially important countries, including Saudi Arabia, sold American currency from their monetary reserves in exchange for West German marks and British pounds...