Word: money
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...gold would remain the primary international asset by which nations settle their debts with one another. The U.S. dollar, then backed by 57% of the free world's nationally held supply of gold, would be the key currency. Under that arrangement, then and today, other nations value their money in terms of the U.S. dollar, which is itself valued in terms of gold. The dollar's acceptability in world finance rests on the U.S. Treasury's pledge to redeem dollars held by foreign governments for gold at an unchanging...
...currency without IMF permission. In practice, the IMF allows devaluation only when economic misfortune (almost always inflation) strips a currency of its hitherto established value. Barring devaluation, every IMF nation must buy, sell or borrow foreign currencies-in practical terms, dollars-in sufficient quantity to keep its own money within 1% of its declared worth...
...that now shows increasing signs of fragility. There are at least two separate, but related, troubles. The volume of world trade is rising far more quickly than the global supply of gold. To overcome that gap, the IMF last year devised a sort of "paper gold"-a new international money called "special drawing rights." Use of the SDKs, as they are called, awaits ratification by nations that contribute at least 80% of the IMF's $21 billion bankroll...
OSWALD SPENGLER called money "a form of thought." Tolstoy condemned it as "a new form of slavery." While Thoreau figured that "the more money, the less virtue," Schopenhauer argued that "money alone is absolutely good" and Samuel Johnson declared: "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money." The New Testament holds that love of money is the root of all evil, but Mark Twain reversed that adage into "lack of money is the root of all evil." Socrates said: "Virtue does not come from money, but from virtue comes money." Gertrude...
These and a thousand other truisms or semi-truisms are readily recalled in times of financial trouble to bolster this or that point. But money is also something very simple beyond all those definitions. It is one reliable means of keeping score on the accomplishments of a person, a company or a country. Money gives its possessor a range of choices, and the way that a nation chooses to handle its money sharply illuminates its character. When the world tumbles into a financial crisis, the problem reflects the deeds and misdeeds of the principal governments, and at least in part...