Word: businessman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Artemus Smith (a hardheaded businessman): As I was saying, Joe. I'm tired of all this pussyfooting. Why not come right out and call it a depression...
Jones: Now you sound like you've been hobnobbing with those fellows over on FORTUNE. That's a pretty fancy phrase. But you may be right. What worries me-and I'm not a businessman-is that if this disenchantment continues long enough, we might get a sincere depression. I think we need to watch the next few months with a good deal of nervousness...
Smith: True. And the depression-or recession-is a good excuse for a lot of political-economic folly-farm subsidies, xenophobic trade measures and things like that. What we really need, to use a businessman's trite expression, is a truly sound economy-growth and expansion, yes, but tempered with soundness. And we need to have it sound at every level-at the level of Government, at the level of the corporation, and at the level of the individual family budget...
...EVERY businessman has his pet phrase for the slump-the "saucer recession," the "polkadot recession," etc., etc. It is also the recession where more statistics get more microscopic study than ever before, as every economist-amateur or professional-searches to discover whether the U.S. economy is going up, down or sideways. The only trouble is that statistics, like dry martinis, should be handled with care. For a prime example of how befuddling statistics can be, see BUSINESS, Unemployment Figures...
This is a first novel about a small New York businessman that blends folk humor with wisecrack as if Sam Levenson had had his jokes edited by George S. Kaufman. Hero Bill Roth, 23, is an ex-G.I. working for his engineering degree who lives with his parents in The Bronx. He sleeps on a sofa couch in the living room "on the main trade route from the bedroom to the bathroom." When he stays out late with girls or comes home with liquor on his breath, he is treated to his mother's virtuoso sighs...