Word: pound
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Finance Ministry announced that in the first eight months of 1971, Japan's dollar holdings increased from $4.4 billion to $12.5 billion -a staggering leap of nearly 200% that is likely to be remembered as a historic beating for the dollar. British officials, worried that the pound might gain too much against the dollar and thus make British exports too expensive, took measures atoned at keeping speculative money out of the country. After forbidding interest payments on new holdings by nonresidents, they cut the prime rate from...
...strategy proved mildly hopeful. The dollar drifted down slightly in money markets, but nothing like the expected 12% to 15%. At the close of trading last week, the franc had risen by 2.8% in relation to the dollar, the mark by 7.6%, the Swiss franc by 2.5%, and the pound by 3%. Put on a limited float at week's end, the Japanese yen rose as much as 7% in the first day's trading...
...fretfully anywhere from 1.2% to 2.8% above its normal dollar exchange rate. In Paris, where a complex two-tier system separates fixed-rate international trade and business dollars from tourist and capital investment dollars, the U.S. currency stayed within 3% of parity for free-floating transactions. In London, the pound reached only 3% above parity. With pressure on the yen relieved, however, Europeans grew concerned that their own currencies might become the new target of international speculation. As a precaution, the British Treasury banned interest payments on new foreign deposits "for the time being...
Itinerant buck passers, including some 4,000,000 Americans living and vacationing abroad, faced a confusing array of exchange rates. Early in the week, the London Hilton was gouging its guests $2.75 for the pound, while the American Express office in that city was gamely taking traveler's checks at the official rate of $2.42. A few rapacious landladies at London bed-and-breakfast lodgings were squeezing $3 to the pound out of gullible visitors. Tourists did not know what their dollars would be worth the next minute, or in the next country. From Canada to Japan, some merchants...
...year-old Code of Hammurabi by more than 150 years. It showed that price controls were used in the ancient Babylonian kingdom and that criminal penalties were carefully spelled out: "If a man bites the nose of another man and severs it, he shall pay a fine of one pound of silver...