Word: snakes
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...dhaman is a yellow-tinted snake, ranging from 4 ft. to 10 ft. in length, that once had the run of the Indian countryside. To the dismay of the Indian Parliament, these are hard times for the dhaman, as well as for the more than 20 other varieties of Indian herpetofauna that prey on, among other things, the domestic brown rat, known as Rattus rattus. Thanks in part to commerce, which values the hide of a snake more than that of a rat, the rodents have been winning the battle against their deadliest enemy. Two weeks ago, India...
...charged London with deliberately letting the pound drop in order to stimulate exports at the expense of Britain's trading partners-a charge that British Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey denied. Fourcade also made a last-ditch attempt to keep the franc in the so-called European snake -an arrangement that bound France, West Germany, the Benelux countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark to hold their currencies within a 4.5% range of fluctuation against each other. Fourcade proposed that the permitted variation be widened slightly, allowing the franc to drift gently down and the mark and Dutch guilder...
...week before last. That was the first stage in a decline that moneymen thought might eventually come to 10%. The drop seriously embarrassed the government of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. It was Giscard, a staunch proponent of currency stability, who had brought France back into the snake last July, over the objections of his top economic advisers...
...under pressure, because Denmark suffers from chronic trade deficits ($128 million in the first nine months of 1975) and Belgium is burdened by an 11% inflation rate. At week's end there was growing concern that one or both might be forced to follow France out of the snake. At the same time, the value of the German mark against other snake currencies threatens to rise above the 4.5% range. There are persistent rumors-denied by German officials-that the nation might once again revalue its currency upward...
Although the gyrations will presumably stop soon, they already have had pernicious effects. Some economists estimate that the fall in the lira has doomed Italy to a 20% inflation rate this year-v. 12% last year-by making imports more expensive. The European snake has been reduced to a small grouping of Germany and some close economic allies; it cannot be, as it was once supposed, the foundation of European economic unity. The central problem is to find a way to let currency values shift to reflect changing economic conditions, and yet keep them reasonably stable; the current turmoil illustrates...