Word: creep
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...warm glow of an abundant summer there was little outcry from the American public against the U.S. creeping inflation. In fact, the few complainers were grumbling mostly about governmental action designed to stop the creep-e.g., the U.S. tight-money policies (see BUSINESS). In France and Japan, there were real outcries against import controls, in India against present wage ceilings in nationalized factories. When the chairman of Sweden's Riksbank (roughly equivalent to the U.S.'s Federal Reserve) increased the discount rate to 5% last month, Sweden's Socialist-Agrarian government, sensitive to popular pressures, kicked...
...fact remains that the massive creep of inflation has responsible economists worried. Not the least of their problems is the fact that inflation is built into inflation. Item: when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the 0.5% cost-of-living increase last week, the wages of some 650,000 electrical, aircraft, automobile and trucking workers automatically went up under wage-price escalator contracts by 2? to 4? an hour. These high marks in turn set goals for other unions and for unorganized workers to shoot at. And the increased wage levels set the stage for rises in prices...
Pemex is still inefficient, with 40,000 employees doing work that could be handled by 30,000. Graft and nepotism still creep in. Pemex must import $70 million worth of high-grade petroleum products yearly (but exports $45 million worth of crude oil plus some refined products). Its reinvestment rate is not high enough for any truly spectacular progress. But Bermudez does not propose to sacrifice Pemex welfare trappings in risky gambles on fast development. The success to date, he believes, plentifully fulfills Pemex' motto: "For the service of the nation...
...might ease during the year's second half. But before week's end, the day after the President appealed for "statesmanlike action," Pittsburgh's giant U.S. Steel Corp. announced inflationary price boosts averaging $6 a ton (see BUSINESS). To halt the price index's upward creep, Washington was going to need some help from Pittsburgh (Pa.)-as well as Mexico...
Missing Assembly Line. Why, amid the ups and downs of other goods, do non-goods prices creep steadily upward? Partly because they are still catching up with the steep rises of food and manufactured-goods prices in 1945-52. But partly-and more significantly, in a long-range view-because productivity rises more slowly in the service field than in manufacturing. The assembly line is missing, the possibilities of automation scant; machinery can do little to speed up the output of the barber, the bartender, the cop, or the bureaucrat. Yet, in order to hold workers in a period...