Word: lired
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...latest trouble began building in late January with a minor event: Italy set new exchange rules for the lira. Fearing that the value of their money would drop, many Italians sold lire for dollars, then exchanged the dollars for Swiss francs. The inflow of dollars panicked Swiss authorities, who stopped buying up the greenbacks; the dollar's price in Swiss francs dropped 7%. That did it. Bankers, Arab oil sheiks and treasurers of multinational corporations feared that the U.S. currency would fall against the German mark and the Japanese yen as well; they unloaded their dollars in staggering quantities...
...Common Market ministers did not specify any details for the eventual replacement of francs, marks, guilders and lire by some supranational monetary unit. An alternative might be that the Common Market currencies will continue to exist side by side, with each bank note carrying a printed table of its equivalent value in sister currencies. Already the ministers have agreed that the trading margins of their money will eventually be reduced to zero...
...Henry Fondant) who comes to Rome for an International Monetary Fund meeting. En route, Marzi stops at a tobacco shop. "I'm a gumdrop in here to get some coins for the Trevi fountain," he says. Instead of a few coins, his change is a chocolate bonbon. "Nougat lire," the tobacconist explains. "Plus ca change, plus c'est la creme chose," observes the professor...
...held at Rome's Palazzo Corsini, principally in a conference room decorated with Renaissance paintings of voluptuous nudes. At midweek the Finance Ministers and central bankers of the Ten shooed their aides out of the room and began talking numbers-just how many pounds, francs, marks, yen and lire a dollar should be able to buy. They did not fully agree, and they did not even begin to settle some basic controversies over tariff, farm, investment and defense policies (see box next page). But then progress on the money front vastly increased the chance that the currency crisis will...
Restaurants in Rome offered an improvised menu for Americans unable to buy lire: a fat sandwich and a Coke for $1. When the unofficial rate for Swiss francs sank to 3.25 per dollar, one hotel manager in Montreux took his guests' home addresses and promised to send them refunds if and when the rate is fixed at a higher level. And the Palm Beach Casino at Cannes continued to accept dollars at the official rate of 5.4 French francs. "Why should we create a security margin for ourselves?" asked Jean Toutain, the casino's director. "Taking risks...