Word: downturn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...practice, the commitment has meant that governments, using the tools of Keynesian economics, react to anything but the briefest and shallowest downturn by increasing spending and pumping up the money supply in order to get the economy moving again. The strategy has in its way worked brilliantly: though governments have by no means always achieved full employment, the industrial world has consistently kept jobless rates to levels that would have been considered impossibly low before World War II. But the commitment also means that the industrial world has deliberately thrown away what used to be its chief weapon against inflation...
...most important division on the Board concerns the course that the present downturn is taking and what should be done to pull the economy out of it. The Board's more liberal members grant that the slide has been aggravated by the energy crisis. By now, they say, the gasoline shortage has seriously weakened consumer demand for cars; for housing, especially in distant suburbs; and for the merchandise sold by suburban stores that are reachable only by auto. So, they argue, the slump is taking on the characteristics of an old-fashioned recession caused mainly by inadequate buying. Heller...
...current downturn has lasted roughly three months, and no figures are yet available on what has happened to real G.N.P.Industrial production has dropped 1.4%, the jobless rate has risen six-tenths of a percentage point, to 5.2%, and employment has declined in about 20% of the nonfarm industries. So, by NBER standards, the U.S.is not yet in a recession-though it could enter one later...
Prospects for low-income groups are even less promising as the nation drifts into an economic downturn and possibly a recession. The CEA notes that in a recession, low-paid workers with minimal skills are usually laid off first-or work fewer hours per week. Even though those at the bottom of the income ladder have not gained on those at the top, they are better off. In 1972 a total of 12% of the population were classified as living in poverty...
Alas, it was too good to be true. The September fall in wholesale prices canceled only part of the index's explosive 6.2% rise in August. Administration spokesmen quickly warned consumers not to expect a sudden downturn in store prices; indeed, Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, bluntly predicted a continued "fairly rapid rise in retail food prices" in the next six months. Industrial prices, which most economists regard as a better gauge of basic inflationary trends than mercurial farm prices, rose a substantial .7%. Even if the rise in living costs tapers off somewhat...