Word: better
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Yale Professor Robert Triffin warns, however, that many foreign holders of dollars, like holders of stocks that have been going down sharply, are ready to sell any time they can get a slightly better price. Says he: "They don't want to sell at the bottom, but each time the dollar moves up a little bit there are lots of people who are just waiting to unload"-and such selling will keep any dollar rebound from going very...
...sales may climb by 25%. Shoppers are packing malls in suburban Houston to buy stereos, TVs and Betamax recorders. Expensive furs, jewelry, silks and cashmeres are brisk sellers everywhere. Many retailers echo the report of a luggage salesman at Chicago's Marshall Field department store: "Customers are buying better quality. It's the old philosophy of being too poor to buy cheap...
There is a buy-now attitude among Americans, who figure that prices are not going to go down and if they see something they like, they had better buy it now. Economist Alan Greenspan estimates that an unprecedented 25% of the average household's after-tax income now goes to meeting interest and principal payments each month, and that "there are a significant number of households that allocate 40% or more of their income to debt service...
Some, like the Consumer Price Index, are limited but fairly consistent and reliable estimates, while others, such as retail sales, inventories and quarterly productivity figures, are little better than ballpark guesses. One of the weakest is the index of leading indicators, which is supposed to foreshadow economic trends. Often the Commerce Department releases preliminary figures that give false signals and then, like Stalin rewriting history, subjects the numbers to revision after revision. Statistics can be made to dance to almost any tune, depending on how they are presented, particularly at year's end. Warns Economist Walter Heller...
...Administration's assault on the entitlements has been weak and equivocal. One idea that deserves more attention than it is getting is Califano's hospital cost containment bill, which would curb Medicare expenditures by prohibiting hospitals from raising costs by more than 9% a year. Perhaps an even better approach is Economist Penner's suggestion to have the program's recipients pick up a portion of their hospital and doctors' fees. This would not only cut expenditures but also discourage recipients from rushing to the doctor for every sneeze and sniffle. The whole concept of linking federal pensions...