Word: greenbacks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...drop in U.S. oil use should have given the dollar a needed boost on money markets. But the greenback twitched indecisively as traders remained mesmerized by the theatrics of the Iranian drama. Since the freezing of Iran's money in U.S. banks, some of the counterthreats from Tehran have been plainly bluster. "We have the dollar by the throat," chortled Banisadr. Not quite. Though the National Iranian Oil Co. announced that it no longer will accept dollars for oil, Iran needs the U.S. currency to pay for imports of everything from Australian wheat to Japanese machinery, which...
...relentless inflation and repeated runs on the no longer almighty dollar, it was a wild week. For some time, Americans had seemed able to ignore or nimbly thrust out of mind repeated symptoms of their out-of-joint economy, like alarming new price rises and further drubbings of the greenback abroad. But last week those distant, or perhaps too familiar, woes hit home, and hard, in a burst of financial hysteria that engulfed markets, speculators and ordinary investors big and small from Wall Street to Main Street...
...spree on the Big Board. The dumping spread, irrationally, not only to the commodities and futures markets but also to the international currency centers. Out of fear and uncertainty, traders who had been buying dollars on Monday on the logical theory that the Fed's moves would strengthen the greenback abruptly began selling them again...
Though the greenback strengthened a bit late last week as the markets anticipated new dollar defense moves, worry remains deep about the future of the monetary system that helped create the world's postwar prosperity. The central problem is the roughly 1 trillion footloose dollars that slosh around banks and currency markets outside the U.S. For many years during the 1950s and 1960s, Europeans complained about a "dollar gap." Greenbacks were the only currency that was accepted everywhere, though there were not enough of them around to finance world trade and development. But the dollar gap has since become...
...gold frenzy continues to weaken the buck, OPEC might again move to lift its dollar-denominated price of oil sharply. Uncertainty over just what the greenback will be worth in months ahead would slow much trade that is negotiated in dollars. Beyond that, economists disagree about whether gold itself poses any threat. Many believe, as Economist John Maynard Keynes said, that gold is just a "barbarous relic," a commodity like pork bellies that should have no more monetary impact than wampum beads. Yet in this real world, the bullion boom could ultimately prove highly inflationary...