Word: guilders
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...with no airy royal detachment the appalling fact that one-fifth of The Netherlands Bank gold reserve had been withdrawn in the frantic scramble for gold produced by fear that Catholic Party Leader Professor Petrus Josephus Mattheus Aalberse might succeed in forming a Cabinet and might then take the guilder off the gold standard...
Such a maneuver may be "neat," but Dutchmen fearfully wondered last week how often the Queen & Colijn may have to repeat a master stroke involving one-fifth of the nation's gold reserve. Amid Depression's typhoon, as the Dutch guilder is threatened in crisis after crisis, The Netherlands Bank frantically hoists its discount rate to 6% during the storms to attract as much gold as possible, then hastily reefs it down to 2½% during the lulls to give Dutch business the benefit of "cheap money." Inevitably such desperate sailing scares the passengers half out of their...
Wilhelmina, who has reigned longer than any other living king or queen (45 years), let it be known that she said, "These are grave times," when receiving last week her great and favorite Premier, beak-nosed Hendrikus Colijn, bald battler these many years to keep the guilder on gold...
...understood that Her Majesty made him promise to keep the guilder on gold before he received the royal mandate. Next day Catholic Aalberse came back to tell Protestant Wilhelmina that he could not get a majority in Parliament. Gratified, the Queen again named Colijn her Premier...
Meanwhile the guilder had been a target for bear raiders all week, plunged one day fully 1? off parity, as the Bank of The Netherlands raised its discount rate from 3% to 5% to 6%, and grimly paid out 1/9 of its gold reserves to Dutchmen who are perfectly at liberty to hoard. The week closed with the guilder still 84.8% backed by gold...