Word: greenbackers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...relentless inflation and repeated runs on the no longer almighty dollar, it was a wild week. For some time, Americans had seemed able to ignore or nimbly thrust out of mind repeated symptoms of their out-of-joint economy, like alarming new price rises and further drubbings of the greenback abroad. But last week those distant, or perhaps too familiar, woes hit home, and hard, in a burst of financial hysteria that engulfed markets, speculators and ordinary investors big and small from Wall Street to Main Street...
Though the greenback strengthened a bit late last week as the markets anticipated new dollar defense moves, worry remains deep about the future of the monetary system that helped create the world's postwar prosperity. The central problem is the roughly 1 trillion footloose dollars that slosh around banks and currency markets outside the U.S. For many years during the 1950s and 1960s, Europeans complained about a "dollar gap." Greenbacks were the only currency that was accepted everywhere, though there were not enough of them around to finance world trade and development. But the dollar gap has since become...
...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...
...gold frenzy continues to weaken the buck, OPEC might again move to lift its dollar-denominated price of oil sharply. Uncertainty over just what the greenback will be worth in months ahead would slow much trade that is negotiated in dollars. Beyond that, economists disagree about whether gold itself poses any threat. Many believe, as Economist John Maynard Keynes said, that gold is just a "barbarous relic," a commodity like pork bellies that should have no more monetary impact than wampum beads. Yet in this real world, the bullion boom could ultimately prove highly inflationary...
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...