Word: majority
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Germans are talking about revaluing by 8% to 10% if the franc is dropped by the same amount. Any major increase in value of European money would tend to help the U.S. balance of trade-which posted a $215 million surplus in March-by increasing the price of imports. Without revaluation, it will be a long, uneasy summer in the foreign exchange markets...
Beyond Western Europe and the U.S., there is an almost global glut of grains. Major advances in farming-such as the use of high-yield wheat strains in Asia, improved fertilizer and increased irrigation-have coincided with successive years of beneficent weather to produce a bumper crop of wheat. India and Pakistan, both traditional grain customers, have increased wheat production by 40% since 1966 and are now near self-sufficiency. The total stock in wheat-producing nations is 51 million metric tons, or almost the same amount of wheat that has been exported annually in world trade...
Price-cutting has started as the five major wheat exporters-France, the U.S., Canada, Australia and Argentina -unload stockpiles below the price minimums set by the International Grains Agreement in 1967. France opened negotiations with Red China on a deal to unload soft wheat. Not wanting to be left holding a surplus, the U.S. followed by underselling grain to Germany and Britain. Canadian farmers, prevented by the strait-laced Canadian Wheat Board from breaking the Grains Agreement, could only fume as prices fell. The board finally relented after it became apparent that a free-for-all was shaping...
...Famine. Now Canada's problem is finding buyers. Even the Russians, saddled with their own surplus, seem disinclined to accept the final 150 million bushels of wheat that they had ordered in 1966 as part of one of the largest grain sales ever concluded. Last month, the five major wheat producers met in Washington to shore up the sagging price floors, but the meeting adjourned without agreement...
...supply is tight primarily because unemployment now runs at a low 3.4%. One inflationary consequence is that labor can demand-and get-some fancy rewards. Last week the Labor Department reported that in major contracts negotiated during this year's first quarter, unions got wage-and-fringe increases that averaged 6.3% annually...