Word: shekels
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...Lebanon has had a relatively healthy free-market economy. The Lebanese pound can be freely exchanged for Western currencies, inflation has been running at a relatively modest 23%, and in 1981 Lebanon had a balance of payments surplus of $1.2 billion. In contrast, the Israeli economy is controlled, the shekel is not readily convertible, and Israeli inflation is in triple digits...
...exports, from armaments to oranges to wine, have grown from $1.4 billion in 1973 to $10.2 billion last year, but not enough to offset $13.9 billion in imports for 1980. Israel's swelling deficit is reflected in its shrinking currency. The depreciated Israeli pound was renamed the shekel 14 months ago and was worth 25?; last week the shekel was selling at an embarrassing...
Indexation at home has led to a constant devaluation on the world money markets of Israeli currency, whose name was changed from the pound to the biblical shekel earlier this year. One digit was knocked off the currency so that ?10 became one shekel. During the past six months the shekel has fallen from 3.4 to 4.7 to the dollar. Because of its huge domestic and foreign borrowings, the country already must spend a crippling 30% of its G.N.P. on repayment of loans and interest. As its currency loses value, the burden of its foreign debts will become heavier...
...more valuable currency would curb the profligate habits of Israelis, who are accustomed to spending their pounds freely. Emotionally, the government hoped, naming the new currency after the ancient Jewish coin would appeal to the Israelis' sense of history. According to Genesis 23: 2-19, Abraham paid 400 shekels to buy a burial site in Hebron for his wife Sarah. In Roman times the shekel was not only a coin but a symbol of Jewish sovereignty. In modern times the World Zionist Congress, for example, liked to refer to its annual levy on members as a shekel...
...thing, the old pounds will continue in circulation for three more months. For another, the new currency is almost indistinguishable from the old. Israelis riding the underground cable car in Haifa immediately took advantage of the similarities. They discovered that the new 1-agora coin (one-hundredth of a shekel) fit into a turnstile slot designed to take 6-pound tokens. They happily rode the cable car at one-sixtieth of the former cost until authorities changed the size of the slot...