Word: pound
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When he returned to Britain recently after a fortnight's absence in Washington and Jamaica, Prime Minister Harold Wilson had little cause for cheer. As last week began, the pound fell to its lowest level ever against the currencies of all Britain's major trading partners, down a disastrous 24.9% from the Smithsonian Agreement level of 1971. Any sharper decline would give the nation's already soaring inflation rate of 30% an explosive new thrust. Labor Cabinet members were warring openly over economic policy and the Common Market referendum, and a rash of strikes had slashed output...
...recession has left nearly a million Britons without jobs, v. 680,000 a year ago; the unemployment total is expected to reach 1.5 million by mid-1976. But that prospect has failed to reverse the inflationary trend; unions still demand and get wage increases of up to 40%. The pound (worth, roughly, $2.30) fell last week to its lowest point ever against most world currencies, a decline of 24.4% since late 1971. The nation that once ran an empire on which the sun never set has become dependent on foreign loans to help meet this year's anticipated public...
Britain's troubles raise the specter of international bankruptcy, a situation in which an uncontrollable run on the pound would force Britain to declare a moratorium on repayment of foreign debts, slap tight controls on wages and prices and limit imports drastically. The result would be a sharp decline in British living standards. While recently presenting a new budget that imposes an additional 25% tax on most luxury items, Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey warned that Britain must not exhaust the patience of foreign lenders. "We would then face the appalling prospect of going down in a matter...
...nation might muddle through one more time: Britain is in the position of the debtor whose creditors can ill afford to force him under because they would lose too much in the process. For example, if oil-rich Arabs started withdrawing their huge deposits from London, the pound would skid much further, thus diminishing the value of the Arabs' sterling holdings before they could convert them to some other currency. But the dependence on foreign money is not only humiliating for the nation that was once the world's greatest financial power, it is risky in the extreme...
...secrets, he confided, is to eat and make love with equal ardor; although figures differ, Halpern averred that sex on the average consumes 100 calories per minute. On disembarking with his Japanese wife, le docteur observed happily that in the course of the cruise he had shed one pound...