Word: pound
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...British have many sterling qualities, but right now sterling is not one of them. Just four months ago the pound was worth $2.02. Last week sterling tumbled no less than four cents against the dollar in a matter of a few hours. It dipped to a historic low of $1.705 before recovering its shaky moorings and closing...
British officials called the fall an "erratic fluctuation." That view may be overly sanguine, but there was indeed no evidence, for the moment at any rate, of a massive flight from sterling. Yet the sudden plunge left no doubt about just how vulnerable the buffeted pound is to the gusts of the marketplace. The slide was touched off when Swiss banks, anticipating new import controls on foreign capital moving into Switzerland, converted sterling into the solid security of Swiss francs. Even this light selling wave was enough to tip the pound into its tailspin. Said one London currency dealer gloomily...
While a cheaper pound lowers the price of British goods in world markets, and thus provides an incentive to lag ging British industry, it also fuels inflation by raising the cost of imported food and raw materials. One official calculation is that each drop of 4% in the ex change rate of sterling adds 1% to domestic inflation, thus threatening the recent improvement (the rate has dropped 6.6 points in the last six months, to an annual pace of 13%). Still, once the spin began, Prime Minister James Callaghan and his Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey had little choice...
...mark about 7% against an average of all major currencies. Compared with the currencies of the most economically troubled European nations, the mark's rise has been striking. So far this year, it has climbed 19.6% against the sinking Italian lira and 13% against the British pound, which last week slipped below $1.80 for the first time. Moreover, with Germany's strong recovery all but assured, any further economic disruptions in Europe this year will probably kick the value of the mark even higher...
Sharp Spikes. The sideshow barkers extolled their wares: "Miss Delilah, the girl who thrives on electricity and smiles when we push the switch on her very own electric chair," and "El Diablo, the king of fire, the human volcano," and "the human blockhead who loves to pound large sharp spikes and razor-tipped awls into his skull...