Word: almost
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Consumers will lead the way down. They are running out of cash, credit and savings; also, they will have to pay much more for oil-related goods and services as varied as food and rents (tractors and furnaces burn fuel). So consumers will be obliged to buy less of almost everything else, notably cars, appliances and other durable goods. Squeezed by tight money, the construction rate of new homes and apartments could go as low as 1.2 million by March. As demand wanes, businessmen will further reduce production and inventories. But by late fall or early winter, their shelves...
...Board of Economists expects the cost of living index, which has been rising at a 13% rate for months, will be going up at a pace of 9% or a bit more next December. The economists admit, however, that they and almost all the other experts have grossly underestimated inflation's staying power in the past several years. Cracks Otto Eckstein, head of Data Resources, Inc.: "I have been predicting the inflation rate for maybe 20 years, and I must have got it right about three times...
...President Carter will face tremendous political pressure during election year to curb prices, board members felt that he would not try to impose mandatory wage and price controls, and that any attempt to do so would be disastrous. With the exception of Beryl Sprinkel, who figured that there is almost a 50% chance that the President will go for controls, most board members gave that prospect only a 20% to 40% chance. Carter first would need congressional authority and, as the debate raged on Capitol Hill, businessmen would rush to raise prices to get in under the wire. Further, board...
...victimized, the Chicken Little pessimists, who had bet on bullion and other precious metals, were made to look prescient. Among the winners were people who had shrewdly put away dimes, quarters and half dollars minted before 1965; at year's end an original $1,000 in those almost pure silver coins was worth $16,300. But anybody who had put his money in a savings bank was a sucker; a $1,000 deposit declined in real value during the year to about $900, after inflation and taxes on the interest receipts...
...deep recession. People learned to cope. They reduced their spending for gas-thirsty big cars and such little luxuries as hardcover books, records and tennis equipment. But they kept right on spending for other goods, particularly the high-quality and the durable, in part because they figured that almost everything would cost more tomorrow and they had better buy products that would last...