Word: lira
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Failures in the economic program brought heavy criticism on Menderes' head, and he did not stand up well under it. He hated to be reminded that the Turkish lira was daily losing value in the free market. He got mad with newspapers for publishing pictures showing people queuing for coffee. He could not stand jokes about himself. He consulted his own Democratic Party less and less, surrounded himself more and more with yes men. But he was still enough of a machine politician to win elections and keep a well-drilled majority in the Grand National Assembly...
...government's motives were painfully clear. Turkey is virtually bankrupt, its foreign trade at a standstill, its people suffering from shortages that range from coal to horseshoe nails. Its lira sells at a black-market rate of about twelve to the dollar instead of the official rate...
...Dijon, knowing the U.S. tourists' unquenchable thirst for cold drinks, the Terminus Hotel has achieved a master stroke of plumbing: faucets in every room dispense chilled red or white wine. In Rome, bartenders will stir up a martini molto secco at the drop of a 500 lira note; half a dozen short order restaurants are pushing Southern fried chicken and barbecued spare ribs with the slogan: "When in Rome, do as Americans do." In Spain, Europe's last stronghold of the "matrimonial" double bed, hotelkeepers are finally switching to the twin beds preferred by U.S. tourists. In Germany...
Last week the free-market rate of the Turkish lira sagged to nine to the dollar (the official rate: 2.8 to $1). The cost of living has been rising 30% a year for the last three years. Coffee is almost unobtainable. Hardships are greatest in the cities, where a laborer must work three days to buy a pair of shoes, and a tourist at the bar of the new Istanbul Hilton Hotel pays six liras-almost a workingman's entire one-day pay-for a martini...
...learn to advise her well. Soon, in the warm air and sculptured hills of Tuscany, Berenson began to find "it" with increasing frequency. Immersed in the works of the great Italian painters, he scratched up a living by taking tourists through the museums and churches of Florence at 1 lira a head. He recalls a terror of being knifed by the local guides, but that did not stop him from feeling ecstasy before the masterpieces of the Renaissance. In 1894 he published the first of his four famed guides to Renaissance art (later reissued as Italian Painters of the Renaissance...