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Because Sunday Bloody Sunday operates in a specific economic context (a newscast of a prevailing monetary crisis serves as the film's refrain). Gilliat feels her movie is "peculiarly political." The political import reads like an open letter to the English, who are familiar with its suggested terms, while an American needs to be told that the Jarrow hunger marches in 1906 are built deep into the nation's memory, and into the background of her characters. Class differentiation in the film as seen, to be gradually disintegrating. Bob represents a classless agent, although his implicit working-class origin...
Saying the Unmentionable. The breakthrough came when the U.S. at last brought itself to offer two indispensable concessions. First, American officials pledged explicitly to drop the 10% import surcharge as part of a money bargain. Then Connally began talking about the previously unmentionable: outright devaluation of the once almighty dollar. For their part, moneymen from Europe and Japan started discussing just how much they would let their currencies rise against the dollar...
Connally lowered the U.S. ante right at the start. The American delegation opened by asking for an average 11 % revaluation of foreign currencies against the dollar, and offering to drop the import surcharge in return. By some calculations, that would produce a $9 billion swing from deficit toward surplus in the U.S. trade balance, rather than the $13 billion switch that Connally had once labeled a non-negotiable demand. An official U.S. paper also stated a "presumption that there would be no change in the value of gold." In the oblique language of financial diplomacy, that statement meant the opposite...
Least Favored Nation. The U.S. Government has been reluctant to offer credit to the Soviets, and they consider that lack to be the biggest block to increased trade. Congress this year gave President Nixon the power to extend to Russia the same Export-Import Bank financing terms now enjoyed by many U.S. trading partners. Last week the President extended Export-Import Bank privileges to Rumania, ending a three-year ban on U.S. credit to Communist-bloc nations. But Nixon has given no clues as to when such financing will actually be granted to Russia, if ever...
Charges of red tape in Washington are common enough, but rarely are they made by high Government officers. In a new report, Secretary of Transportation John Volpe reveals some shocking statistics about the high costs that red tape tack on to the nation's imports and exports. Says Volpe: "The cost of documentation in U.S. international trade has reached nearly $6.5 billion annually, or 7.5% of the value of U.S. export and import shipments." The documents are demanded mostly by the Government, but also by banks, insurance companies and shipping firms. Items...