Word: lira
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...suave oval-faced Italian with a scrubby Vandyke beard, added half a cent last week to the value of the lira.* No prestidigitator, Finance Minister Count Volpi performed this modern alchemy by obtaining Premier Mussolini's assent to a hard-headed Cabinet decree enforcing deflation of the lira. So drastic is this reform that Signor Grandi, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, commented...
...course this deflation of the lira will give rise to sweeping and painful industrial readjustments. For example: An Italian laborer now blows glass vases which are sold for 300 lire ($11.25). If the lira were restored instantly to par, the vase (still priced at 300 lire) would cost $57.90. No vases would then be bought by foreigners, and the laborer would be thrown out of work. Obviously, as the value of the lira increases, the price of the vase in lire will be lowered, but this type of readjustment always lags behind the rapid shift in international exchange, and therefore...
Continuing his comments on last week's really Herculean effort to restore the lira to parity, Under Secretary Grandi declared on behalf of the Cabinet: "As the artificial inflation of industry is punctured there will be many collapses, accompanied no doubt by much suffering, but it is the only honest path open to us and Mussolini in his decisive way has determined to see it through to a finish...
...anti-Fascist riots which have been occurring recently in Palermo, Caltanisetta and Girgenti. Universal Silence. All Fascists were "commanded" by a manifesto to "keep silent about any local strife* within the party which nearly always arises from the stupidest motives." Anti-"Vacationist." To prevent the flight of the Italian lira abroad in the pockets of vacationing Italians, all passport offices were instructed to refuse passports to "vacationists." Signor Mussolini publicly expressed last week his grief at the death of Commander Oscar Cosulich, one of his closest industrial advisors. (See MILESTONES, p.29...
These savings, wrote the Fascist editors, will enable Italy's unfavorable trade balance to be overcome, will result in the stabilization of the lira. Millions of hours of extra labor at no extra cost will provide a surplus for the carrying out of II Duce's triumphant program of building up the army and navy, of restoring the public buildings and monuments of Rome and other Italian cities to the splendor of Augustan days. Missing Minister. Though Mussolini sped the issuance of his Cabinet's decrees behind locked portals, the reported absence from this vital session...