"Microsoft has $18 billion in cash and marketable securities - it's like a nation's central bank defending its currency," he said.

It decides whether Korea should defend its currency in the face of a looming depression by doubling interest rates.

Freed from the need to defend its currency, Brazil's crushing interest rates could return to normal.

It had a respectable $20 billion in foreign exchange reserves and did not squander them trying to defend its currency.

Yeltsin also said he would ask Western leaders to help defend Russia's weakened currency.

Of course, commodity prices started to decline well before Brazil stopped defending its currency earlier this month.

He proclaims a determination to defend our national currency.

What would the situation have been if the various Member States had each had to defend their own individual currency?

However, in defending our currency, are we really going to allow democracy to prove weaker than relatively authoritarian regimes?

But in the last few months Brazil saw $30 billion in reserves washed away, as it tried to defend its currency.