Word: downturn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Government has made no official announcement of this (a recession is customarily defined as two quarters of declining production), but it unofficially estimated last week that national output of goods and services dropped at an annual rate of 2.4% from April through June. OPEC's oil boosts make this downturn immeasurably harder to reverse; they will drain perhaps $30 billion out of Americans' pockets by the end of 1980. Unemployment has been holding steady at just under 6% so far this year, but is sure to rise?perhaps to 7.5% or 8% next year, according to Heller...
Such gloom is justified; another substantial hike in oil prices could well nudge the Western world into recession. But for a number of reasons a new downturn might not be as severe as the one that struck in 1973-74. Then, the first round of OPEC price hikes helped kick off a global recession that quickly became the longest and deepest that the U.S., for one, had experienced since the 1930s. Moreover, when the oil price explosion occurred, the industrialized nations were all lined up at the crest of a simultaneous boom. They all skidded into recession together, and many...
...most convincing evidence that a downturn is coming is that spending by consumers, which has been the chief engine of the nation's 50-month-old recovery, is slowing substantially. The nation's output of goods and services grew by a paltry .8% in the first quarter. For April and May, industrial production actually declined, though only slightly, for the first time since January 1978. The standard forecast now is for a shallow slump lasting no more than two to three quarters...
...downturn would slow U.S. inflation and narrow the American trade deficit. It would reduce U.S. oil consumption and thus reduce upward price pressure on crude oil and other commodities...
...difference between now and 1974 is that instead of declining in unison, thus severely crippling trade, production and growth, the major nations are all at different points in the economic cycle, making a deep world downturn less likely. A sampler of conditions of the key industrial nations...