Word: hocks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sooner had General Manager Antonio Tonello begun flooding the country with ads ("If you are honest and work, you can get money") than competitors charged that he was turning his bank into an undignified "hock shop." They jeered that before long he would be fleeced out of business. Tonello insisted that "the Italian man on the street is as good a credit risk as his counterpart in London and New York...
Though he denies holding his clients in hock, Foreman always demands collateral against his later fee. "If you don't do that," he says, "you can't control the client. If they haven't paid for advice, they won't take it." Foreman has also boasted that his fee methods top mere law in chastising any of his clients who may be guilty. As he puts it: "I can punish them through the pocketbook, where it really hurts...
Cairo is catholic in its debts: it owes money to, among others, the Soviet Union, the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, West Germany and Japan. In all, Egypt is in hock for more than $1 billion in long-term debts, more than half of which must be repaid in hard currencies. Just to service his short-term debts of more than $250 million in hard currency, President Gamal Abdel Nasser was recently forced to sell off a third of Egypt's gold, leaving his country with a dangerously low hard-currency reserve of $108 million. Nasser has also been desperately...
John Doe, 47, a tenement-dwelling Midwesterner in hock to the corner delicatessen, pursues solvency at the horse parlor and the poker table. His purpose is exemplary: he wants to move his seven-year-old son, dying of epilepsy, to a desert climate. A soft-hearted stud dealer pledges the necessary pot but dies before delivering. Doe next touches a baker's doughy widow, to whom he has previously applied for favors of another order; she indignantly draws the line at moneylending. Eventually, Doe's own wife stakes him, unsolicited. And off he flies with Junior, into...
Hans Brinker, Holland's storybook skating whiz, needn't hock the silver skates - not yet. But the way the Dutch economy is going, the occasion may arise. Holland has a severe balance-of-payments deficit, and with wages up 36.5% in three years and living costs climbing at an annual rate of 5%, the country is suffering worse inflationary strains than any European neighbor...