Word: budgeting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Xiu Xiu premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival, China's verdict was swift. "I was banned from working in China for one year," Chen says, "and told to pay a fine of 10% of the budget." The film cost $1 million, much of it out of Chen's pocket. And though it won seven Golden Horse awards (the Chinese-language Oscars), including best film, actor, actress, script and director, it will not be shown soon in China. Perhaps an apology from Chen would help. "I do recognize that I filmed illegally in China," she says...
...light of all this, Keynes would be mystified that the International Monetary Fund is requiring troubled Third World nations to raise taxes and slash spending, that "euro" membership demands budget austerity, and that a U.S. President wants to hold on to budget surpluses. You can bet Keynes wouldn't be silent. Dapper and distinguished as he was, he'd enter the fray with both fists and a mighty roar...
...notion that government deficits are good has an odd ring these days. For most of the past two decades, America's biggest worry has been inflation brought on by excessive demand. Inflation soared into double digits in the 1970s, budget deficits ballooned in the '80s, and now a Democratic President congratulates himself for a budget surplus that he wants to use to pay down the debt. But some 60 years ago, when 1 out of 4 adults couldn't find work, the problem was lack of demand...
Even then, Keynes had a hard sell. Most economists of the era rejected his idea and favored balanced budgets. Most politicians didn't understand his idea to begin with. "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist," Keynes wrote. In the 1932 presidential election, Franklin D. Roosevelt had blasted Herbert Hoover for running a deficit, and dutifully promised he would balance the budget if elected. Keynes' visit to the White House two years later to urge F.D.R. to do more deficit spending wasn't exactly a blazing...
...Depression wore on, Roosevelt tried public works, farm subsidies and other devices to restart the economy, but he never completely gave up trying to balance the budget. In 1938 the Depression deepened. Reluctantly, F.D.R. embraced the only new idea he hadn't yet tried, that of the bewildering British "mathematician." As the President explained in a fireside chat, "We suffer primarily from a failure of consumer demand because of a lack of buying power." It was therefore up to the government to "create an economic upturn" by making "additions to the purchasing power of the nation...