Word: lira
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...January 1976, Italy teetered on an economic precipice. Its currency reserves could cover only two months of necessary imports. The lira was plummeting. External credit had dried up. Dramatically, official foreign exchange markets were shut down for five weeks. When they reopened, the government imposed tight restrictions on imports and credit and raised the discount rate 4 percentage points to stem runaway speculation against the lira-all in close cooperation with the IMF. A year later, the fund granted Italy a $530 million stand-by loan, thus opening the door to commercial credit markets. Within four years, Italy...
...abroad, where Americans were enjoying the spending power of the strongest dollar in years. Propelled by the high level of U.S. interest rates and concerns about political instability abroad, the dollar smashed records for three straight days. The U.S. currency reached alltime highs against the French franc, the Italian lira and the British pound, and a ten-year peak in relation to the West German mark. By the end of the week, a dollar was worth 8.59 francs, 1,700.25 lire and 2.8 marks. The pound cost only $1.40. The dollar's gains continued even though the U.S. Federal...
Vellucci probably won't be the only one spending money. When Gaeta Mayor Quirino Lecesse visited Cambridge in September, he told the city council that his town had allotted 10 million lira (about $6500) to entertain Cambridge officials travelling to Italy...
...lack of any specific pledges by the U.S. to help stabilize exchange rates, and the absence of any willingness in Washington to take any immediate steps to act on the vague promises made, helped push the French franc and the Italian lira to new lows last week against the dollar...
...franc's plight has been aggravated by the persistent strength of the dollar. As high U.S. interest rates draw funds into greenbacks, the dollar last week rose to its highest against the Japanese yen in several years, and set postwar records against the French franc, Italian lira and Canadian dollar. According to a closely watched indicator published by the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., the dollar's trade-weighted value is now higher than it was in 1970. Fulfilling an agreement reached at Versailles, the Reagan Administration last week broke with its free-market doctrine, selling dollars in foreign...