Word: debt
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From Denver last week, President Eisenhower sternly ordered agency heads in Washington to "take every possible step" to pare expenditures during fiscal 1954. As news dispatches told it, the directive was aimed at avoiding a special session of Congress to lift the $275 billion debt ceiling which Congress refused to raise three weeks ago. Actually, Eisenhower was looking farther ahead: "You will be expected to make substantial reductions in your requests ... for the fiscal year...
...businessman in Eisenhower's "business administration," has also fallen heir to the toughest problems. Last week he wrestled with the toughest one yet: how to keep the world's biggest business from going technically "broke." Congress' refusal to raise the $275 billion limit on the U.S. debt (TIME, Aug. 10) made it entirely possible that Humphrey would not have adequate means to pay the Government's bills...
...year ago, they argued that if this rate of thrift could be maintained for six months, the Government would spend only about $32.5 billion in 1953's last half, v. $37.4 billion expected to be spent, and that the $5 billion difference would not only keep the debt below the $277 billion figure Humphrey had predicted by December, but under the $275 billion ceiling...
Actually, the debt ceiling is almost meaningless. Congress has set a ceiling seven separate times in the past 18 years, but has never failed to raise it whenever the Government needed more money (see chart). Economy-minded Senators, well aware that in the same 18 years the ceiling has been lowered only once (at World War II's end), thought that Humphrey's dilemma would make for quicker, bigger cuts in spending. But they also knew, as did Secretary Humphrey, that the ceiling, as a symbol, meant little, that the important thing was the long-range determination...
...completed until almost a year and a half after Steel Co. of Wales was nationalized. It has $47.6 million in issued capital, but is worth more than $196 million. The difference is borrowed money, which went into finishing the plant. Sir John plans first to retire the debt, revamp the capital structure. Even after that is done, investors will look twice before buying into the company. Its streamlined plant requires a steady high rate of production in order to show a profit. It would be hit first and hardest by even a small business slump, while older plants might...