Word: lira
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...explain this popularity, there may be another reason for the tourism explosion. "Let's not be coy," says Briton Charles Stanford, who is traveling through the country in a camper with his wife. "The exchange rate has a lot to do with it. Every week we're here, the lira improves." Three years ago the Turkish lira was about 600 to the dollar; today it hovers around 1,300. Pamela Douglas, 24, a Los Angeles student, has been sharing rooms at boardinghouses for 2,500 liras a night. At the current exchange rate, that comes out to slightly less than...
...zones have known they were in Italy after being showered with vast sums of lire in return for a traveler's check or two. But that heady experience may go the way of the Medici, thanks to a proposal by the Italian Cabinet to lop three zeros off the lira. Instead of doling out 1,250 or so lire for a dollar, bank clerks would slap down a single new lira and 25 centesimi, or cents. Advocates of the plan say the current huge denominations of lire turn such mundane calculations as balancing a checkbook into nightmares...
...redenomination of the lira may be delayed, however, by Italy's usual political turmoil. Days after the plan was unveiled, the country's 47th postwar government collapsed during a budget crisis. Even so, broad support for currency reform may encourage the new regime to move forward on the proposal...
History does not offer much encouragement on the benefits of devaluation. The British pound and Italian lira dropped during much of the 1970s, while the West German mark and other Continental currencies rose. Yet at the end of the decade West Germany was enjoying a massive trade surplus and manageable inflation. Britain and Italy, meanwhile, languished under trade deficits and double-digit inflation. Sir James Goldsmith, the British financier, witnessed the process firsthand. Warns he: "Like drugs, devaluation gives you a breather, a small kick. Then it becomes an inflationary merry-go-round to , hell." Only when Britain began pumping...
...costly venture. Income from its approximately $10 million endowment covered less than half of the center's $1.2 million operating budget during the 1985-'86 fiscal year. Trying to make up the additional cost, coupled with compensating for the falling price of the U.S. dollar against the Italian lira, has forced the University to begin seeking outside grants and donations...