Word: pound
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...welshed on the deal. One major union after another won pay raises of 30% and more; during the past twelve months, average weekly wage rates for manual workers rose 32.6%, leapfrogging ahead of the 25% inflation rate for the same period. Last week, after inflation had worsened and the pound sterling had hit a new low, Wilson and his Cabinet took a deep breath and finally scrapped the tattered social contract. Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey announced that beginning with the September round of pay negotiations no wage increases above 10% will be allowed...
Back in London next day, the Prime Minister had to eat more than strawberries. On the foreign exchange, the pound opened at an alltime low of 29.2% below the value fixed by agreement with Britain's main trading partners at the end of 1971. One reason for the drop: nervous Arab depositors began withdrawing funds from London banks. Kuwait alone converted ?50 million into dollars in one day. A gentle slide of the pound had been viewed by many economists as a healthy means of erasing some of the trading disadvantages created by the differing rates of inflation between...
...slapstick stooge. There's no question that Allen's stock formula has hit home to a lot of losers and tickled a lot of losers-watchers, but when you get right down to it, it's a pretty thin joke. There are only so many laughs to the 98-pound weakling dilemma, whether it's set at muscle beach or Martinique. And it is where Allen scrapes the dregs of slapstick gags that he is at his weakest. When Boris Grushenko, "the young coward all St. Pete is talking about," fumbles through basic training like a moldy replay of Modern...
...fronts at once." The infectious gloom of the Basel moneymen spread to the London stockmarket, killing any hopes for an upsurge in the wake of the pro-Market landslide. The day after the B.I.S. report was issued, there was a rush of Arab petrodollars out of London and the pound fell to a record low, 25.9% below the Smithsonian-agreement level of 1971. Meanwhile, new figures published last week showed that investment in manufacturing industry is now dropping at the unprecedented annual rate...
...making them effective. In the past, such agreements-which usually rely on some international body to dictate export quotas designed to keep prices within a set range-have rarely succeeded. Even cartels have not worked for anyone but the oil producers. Copper prices, for example, have fallen 86? per pound in the past year to 54?, despite substantial production cutbacks by four large producers-Chile, Peru, Zambia and Zaïre. To benefit from a sudden jump in coffee prices, Brazil and other growers ignored an international coffee pact more than a year ago; now that prices are down they...