Word: deficit
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Most startling fact exposed: even before war began, the incalculably rich British and French empires were operating at a deficit, had to pay for part of the goods they imported out of their accumulated capital. In the "good" year 1937, FORTUNE estimated that this deficit (imports not balanced by exports, shipping, interest and dividends, tourist expenditures and gold production) amounted to $768,800,000. Only Canada had an export surplus (including services), and that amounted to only $73,200,000. For 1940, FORTUNE estimated that the combined empires, "like a run-down family selling off its heirlooms," would need...
...swing this mounting deficit, the Allies (including Belgium, The Nether lands, their possessions and Norway) had an estimated total in gold and foreign in vestments of $24,475,000,000. Upwards of half of their investment is now in belligerent areas, of doubtful liquidating value...
...their quick assets in the U. S. alone were sufficient to last them four years at the 1940 deficit rate. Against an enemy "strong only in heavy industry and in will" they had, in addition to this accumulated fat, control of trade routes over which their empires could transport...
...have sought to tax all war profits up to 95%. Mild, as war-profits taxes go, La Follette 's was nevertheless inequitable. Reason: corporations that have recently earned a high rate of return would be penalized in comparison with those that have been running at or near a deficit. For the latter (railroads, etc.) could ride the boom a long time (with a leverage quotient seductive to investors) before reaching the onerous tax brackets. The more efficient a corporation has been, the more its capital consists of brains instead of brick - in short, the more successful a corporation...
...brigaded its appetite, lived off stored-up peacetime surpluses. It lacks men enough to till its own fields, has had to summon 30,000 agricultural laborers from Italy and import thousands of Polish slaves. Nor can Denmark and Norway be expected to make up Germany's food deficit. Norwegian peasants scrape so little from their rocky slopes that Norway is accustomed to import more than half its food supply. Even Denmark, where agriculture is an industry, relies on overseas trade for 13% of its fodder. Densely populated Belgium and The Netherlands supply but half and two-thirds respectively...