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More unnerving still, Administration experts now estimate that the U.S. will suffer inflation rates at or close to double-digit levels throughout the 1980s, which could mean a steady erosion in material standards of living. Previously, the Administration had contended that the current hyperinflation was largely a consequence of recent OPEC price increases and other sharp rises in the costs of energy, plus the soaring cost of housing. (Housing in particular distorts the CPI because increases in the cost of mortgage loans are weighted as if everybody bought a house every month, which of course nobody does.) The Administration...
...popular, Reagan confronts a Democratic President who, after a temporary surge in the national polls because of the crises in Iran and Afghanistan, is now plagued by declining job ratings. The odds are that by fall, Carter will be trying to defend his management of an economy with double-digit inflation and rising unemployment, gasoline prices of upwards of $2 per gal. and a reduced budget that offends many of the traditional Democratic-constituencies. New York Opinion Researcher Daniel Yankelovich sums it up: "The biggest thing Reagan has going for him is Carter...
Worse still, with housing prices and mortgages now rapidly climbing out of reach for just about everyone, even the income from new mortgages is beginning to dry up. As a result, more and more thrifts are finding it all but impossible to pay the double-digit interest rates needed to attract deposits. Asserts Saul Klaman, president of the National Association of Mutual Savings Banks:' "It's this simple: the money market funds have been a disaster for our industry." Some normally antiregulation financiers are now demanding controls on the money market funds similar to the ones banks face...
...point of absurdity. Rampant inflation in such Third World countries as Zaïre (more than 90%) and Argentina (more than 120%) has been fueled by years of economic mismanagement, corruption, and deficit spending financed by the uncontrolled growth of the money supply. The newest member of the triple-digit club is Israel, whose current 121.4% inflation rate has been caused largely by heavy defense spending, high oil prices, public works and costly social welfare programs...
...Robert Russell, director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, warned before Carter spoke that double-digit inflation would continue through the 1980s...