Word: pounded
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...area are 45 countries-the Commonwealth and its traditional trading partners-as disparate as Jordan, Iceland, Pakistan, Eire, Ghana and South Africa. They invest most of their own foreign-exchange holdings in British gilt-edged bonds, thus swelling the reserves that Britain can use to defend the pound. When these countries run into deficits in their foreign trade, which happens particularly when commodity prices drop, the situation changes: the sterling area members cash in their bonds and thus pull down Britain's reserves. This is precisely what occurred this year; so far, the sterling nations have reduced their British...
Every Thursday morning, in a ritual as fixed and revered as the changing of the guard, the Bank of England's 18 di rectors meet behind its Corinthian col umns and mahogany doors to plot their strategy for protecting the pound. In measured tones, they debate how much money to borrow in the domestic mar ket, whether to buy or sell sterling in foreign markets and - most important -whether to change the bank's interest rate. After each meeting the chief liai son man, Peter Daniell, dons his top hat, starts on a 21-minute walk across Bartholomew...
Last week Daniell had good news: the Bank of England cut its interest rate from a forbidding 7% , which had pre vailed since last November's pound cri sis, to 6% . While the lower rate will tempt some international speculators to shift their money out of British banks, the government hopes that it will also stimulate the economy sufficiently to at tract other deposits. The Bank of Eng land's directors felt confident enough to take that risk because British reserves are strengthening; last week the Treas ury announced that the sterling area's gold and foreign...
...decline: a 22% drop in the price of Australia's wool, a 33% plunge in the price of Ghana's cocoa, a surge in India's food imports. Ironically, the sterling area's ailments have been aggravated by Britain's attempts to buttress the pound and by the U.S.'s program to end its own payments deficit. Because of the cutback in U.S. and British loans and investment, Australia's reserves fell from $2 billion in January to $1.5 billion in May. India's reserves are down to an alltime...
Britain's government leaders com plained that the "gnomes of Zurich" gravely aggravated last November's pound crisis by coldly dumping pounds...