Word: lira
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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This was interpreted as meaning that Dr. Schacht would not for the time being devalue the mark which in any case has been for years a purely artificial currency. But what about the lira? Would Premier Benito Mussolini, who placed the lira on gold in the days when Calvin Coolidge was President and the Gold Standard sacrosanct, recognize that a page of economic history has turned and the entire world must seek readjustment...
...romantic Venice, the year's largest crop of illegitimate Italians is always born in March, thanks to the annual festive "Hymen Harvest" duly celebrated last week. For this occasion Il Duce's ban against kissing in public, which is punished with a fine of 10 lira (80?) was suspended for the night. After filing in a long sacred procession through the Church of Il Redentore, some 10,000 Venetian youths and maidens of the rabble rowed out to the Lido in the year's greatest gondola fleet, slept on the beach under the moon, returned to Venice...
Pouncing on the lira accounts in Italy of London banks, including funds of many maiden ladies and widows who find Britain's climate too bleak, II Duce blocked all payments out of these accounts. Simultaneously gold was declared a State monopoly but Italians were not ordered to turn it in. If they would deposit it with one of the State banks they were offered 5% interest on the value of the metal and its "return within one year in gold of the same weight and fineness...
...pistol shot abruptness Italian "food profiteers" were whisked to jail, average Rome food prices downed slightly during the week, butchers were ordered to close shop Tuesdays and sell no beef Wednesdays, and II Duce rapped that "Fascist discipline" will keep Italians from overeating. Famed Count Volpi, stabilizer of the lira, again moved in Government circles which he left after one of the Dictator's orders to "change the guard" (TIME, July 16. 1928). Italy's tempo last week was definitely staccato-and the King came out openly...
Though the lira is a managed currency, II Duce has kept it on his technical gold standard through eight long years of rumors that he was bluffing and might be expected to devalue any day. To frosty bankers it must eternally seem like bluffing when a fire-eating politician shouts at the top of his lungs, screams in headlines and has cut into a monument at Pesaro: "We will defend the lira to the last breath, to the last drop of blood...