Word: lira
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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History does not offer much encouragement on the benefits of devaluation. The British pound and Italian lira dropped during much of the 1970s, while the West German mark and other Continental currencies rose. Yet at the end of the decade West Germany was enjoying a massive trade surplus and manageable inflation. Britain and Italy, meanwhile, languished under trade deficits and double-digit inflation. Sir James Goldsmith, the British financier, witnessed the process firsthand. Warns he: "Like drugs, devaluation gives you a breather, a small kick. Then it becomes an inflationary merry-go-round to , hell." Only when Britain began pumping...
...costly venture. Income from its approximately $10 million endowment covered less than half of the center's $1.2 million operating budget during the 1985-'86 fiscal year. Trying to make up the additional cost, coupled with compensating for the falling price of the U.S. dollar against the Italian lira, has forced the University to begin seeking outside grants and donations...
...explosion of the Krakatoa volcano was the loudest sound ever heard on earth -- it was clearly noted 2,058 miles away in Ceylon -- that the Spanish Steps, Rome's great gathering place for tourists, are actually owned by France and leased to Italy for an annual fee of one lira (about .07 cent)? Where else can it be learned that Henry VII's Queen Elizabeth was the original model for the four queens in a deck of playing cards, that Venus is the only planet with a rotation from east to west or that Cyrus the Great could address every...
According to the economic textbooks, the price of imports should go down when the value of a country's currency goes up. Reason: when the dollar is worth more francs, marks or lira, products originally priced in those currencies should be correspondingly cheaper. In the theoretical world of economists, a British suit that costs (pounds)150 in London should sell in the U.S. for $300, plus a little more for shipping and import duties, when the pound is worth $2. If the value of the pound drops to $1, that same suit should cost...
Repercussions from the surge of the dollar were political as well as financial. In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi called a special meeting of several Cabinet ministers to discuss what could be done to protect the lira. Said Lamberto Dini, the director general of the Bank of Italy: "Everyone is concerned, both in Italy and in Europe, because what is emerging is an unsustainable pattern of exchange rates." During her scheduled meeting with President Reagan in Washington this week, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher intends to press for assurances that the Administration will take early steps...