Word: pound
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Most of all, complainers as individuals should not lose heart. They should learn to suppress that feeling of embarrassment, the worry about what other people will think of them. If the neighbors are playing their radio at a level that suggests that they are deaf, pound on the wall. Or ring their doorbell and expostulate in calm, well-reasoned tones. If a bargain gadget advertised for sale turns out to be not as advertised, arm yourself with the advertisement and demand redress. Faced with an outrageous bill for a crankcase repair, demand to see the "flatrate manual" used...
...trouble started with the British pound, which had been weakened by rampant inflation. Denis Healey, financial spokesman for the Labor Party, predicted in a speech in Parliament early last week that the Tory government would devalue the pound in July or August. Currency speculators-mostly commercial bankers and treasurers of multinational corporations-took Healey's forecast as confirmation of their worst fears and began to unload pounds. On a single day, Thursday, about $1.2 billion worth of pounds were sold by speculators. In order to keep the pound's price in other currencies from dropping too sharply, European...
...Friday morning the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath had had enough. Rather than continue using up its foreign currency reserves, it announced that it would let the pound temporarily "float"-that is, trade on international exchanges at any price set by supply and demand. That move in effect devalued the pound, and it quickly sank as low as $2.46 in New York City. The drop canceled two-thirds of the increase in the pound's dollar value, from $2.40 to $2.6057, that was agreed upon in Washington, D.C., in last December's realignment of currencies, called...
...move set off a stampede of speculation that within hours forced currency markets in Europe and Japan to slam shut their exchange windows; they were not scheduled to open again until Tuesday of this week. The dollar, which most money traders consider to be the weakest currency after the pound because of the gigantic U.S. balance of payments deficit, quickly came under attack. The West German Bundesbank had to buy almost $900 million in 90 frenzied minutes Friday morning before officials finally halted trading. In Switzerland, monetary authorities decided not to buy dollars to hold up the price, letting...
...case, it will take time to restore confidence in the system of exchange rates established by the Smithsonian agreement. For months, serious private discussion in Europe has focused on the pound as the weakest link in the system. There have been widespread predictions that the pound would have to be devalued by the time Britain joined the Common Market on Jan. 1. Such talk spread gasoline on the floor of world currency markets, and Labor's Healey tossed a lighted match on it with his devaluation forecast...