Word: digit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Chilean people appear to have voted not so much for Pinochet's vision of the future as for the stability and relative prosperity of the present. Most Chileans, especially the women, who make up 56% of the electorate, still remember the critical shortages and triple-digit inflation of the Allende years. So when the sex-segregated voting booths opened last week, both men and women turned out in force, some of them nervously determined to reject Pinochet, but most willing to support him as long as the good times last. The final tally: 67.6% of voters endorsed the constitution...
...Georgia, state agricultural experts calculated that the total crop loss thus far is about $450 million. Corn, which does not pollinate in triple-digit heat, is hardest hit; but soybeans, hay, fruits and vegetables, tobacco and peanuts are also being badly damaged. Marshall Spray, an Augusta game-bird farmer, has lost more than 25,000 quail since the onset of the heat wave. Said he: "If somebody doesn't help me, I'm out of business...
...Western Europe and Latin America, where indexation has been much more widely practiced than in the U.S., governments and the public are increasingly disenchanted with COLAs. Israel maintains the world's most comprehensive network of cost of living adjustments, and that nation has soared into triple-digit inflation (see box). Brazil, which has been heavily indexed since 1964, is now backing away from the system in the face of 100% inflation. Last January the governments of both Denmark and The Netherlands refused to grant workers and welfare recipients the expected automatic increases in salaries and benefits. Says...
...positive side, cost of living adjustments have enabled Israelis to withstand the onslaught of triple-digit inflation without succumbing to the moral decay, disillusion with democratic institutions and political polarization that are normally associated with a prolonged period of soaring prices. Israelis have continued to save at their commendably high rate (24% of net personal income last year, vs. less than 5% in the U.S.). Because of the continual upward adjustments, the retired and disabled on pensions have not been reduced to poverty. And, despite the business turmoil caused by galloping costs, the country's economy grew last year...
Indexation at home has led to a constant devaluation on the world money markets of Israeli currency, whose name was changed from the pound to the biblical shekel earlier this year. One digit was knocked off the currency so that ?10 became one shekel. During the past six months the shekel has fallen from 3.4 to 4.7 to the dollar. Because of its huge domestic and foreign borrowings, the country already must spend a crippling 30% of its G.N.P. on repayment of loans and interest. As its currency loses value, the burden of its foreign debts will become heavier...