Word: switzerland
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Strolling from his art-filled office through a bulletproof door to a balcony overlooking an immense trading room, Cairo-born André Levy pauses to deny a bit of gossip circulating among his fellow money dealers in Lausanne, Switzerland. He insists that it is just not true that his firm - somewhat whimsically named Tradition S. A. - exchanges half a billion dollars for stronger currencies each day. The actual figure, he states with aplomb, is "more than a billion dollars...
...about what the drop in the world's central trading currency is doing to the global structure of finance. Says Michel Grare, trader for Credit Lyonnais, a major French bank: "It's very worrying if one can't believe in the U.S. What, after all, is Switzerland? It could be fragile." Not a few money traders openly pine for the pre-1973 days of fixed exchange rates, when their business was quiet and orderly - much less profitable, to be sure, but infinitely less tearing on the nerves...
...died in captivity in 1397, having been made a prisoner by the Turks. Coucy was the best of his kind, an able diplomat, a shrewd military leader and a man of good luck. His campaigns took him to England (where he married King Edward's daughter), Tunisia, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary. He died at century's end, appropriately for Tuchman. His only drawback as a subject is that almost nothing personal is known about him. As Tuchman notes with exasperation, the only contemporary sketch of Coucy shows him facing away from the artist...
...dollars aggressively to support their price, and urge foreign central banks to do the same. The Federal Reserve moved into the currency markets late last week, but the government banks of West Germany, Switzerland and Japan scarcely acted at all. Their position is that they have spent billions in the past to support the dollar, with only momentary success. But they might be persuaded to resume support if the dollar buying were combined with other actions, and the U.S. showed greater willingness to intervene...
...checks, which they stash away as investments. At this rate, Nick Deak will be giving Karl Maiden some competition. Still other investors-widows, orphans and the simply frightened-seek Deak for investment advice or put their money into gold, silver or Swiss franc deposits in his banks in Switzerland and Austria. In a dull year he may earn about $1 million for himself. And this has been anything but a dull year...