Word: draconianism
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Meanwhile, a series of surprising actions by the Federal Reserve in recent weeks suggests that Chairman Paul Volcker would like to see those volatile rates remain low in order to prevent the recession from getting any worse. The Fed has switched from a draconian clampdown on the growth of money all spring to a breathless 14.9% annual rate of increase in June. Moreover, it has begun cautiously lowering the levels to which it will let certain key interest rates sink. At the same time, the U.S. central bank, in a further effort to feed cash and credit back into...
...punk-gothic horror movie about a gang of vicious hot-rodders who terrorize the few survivors of an atomic apocalypse, and who are tracked down and slaughtered by a draconian police force. As a story, the film makes for overwrought, even repellent melodrama. The movie has little feeling for, or interest in, the human idiosyncrasies of its characters; they are glorified stunt men, stock figures in stock cars. But Mad Max is not a "people picture." It is an action movie whose subject is machines, and the sophisticated killing ma chine man could become. The hardware is the star here...
Some financial experts attributed the precipitous decline in interest rates to the Federal Reserve's apparent decision to ease its draconian policy of monetary restraint now that the recession appears to be taking hold. When the nation's money supply declined at an annual rate of 1.6% or $6.2 billion to $382.9 billion in the past three months instead of rising 5% as originally targeted by the Fed, economists thought the central bank might be ready to turn on the money tap once again. This seemed to be confirmed when the Federal Reserve announced that it was dismantling...
Meanwhile the President began mulling over the hard choices in the renewed war on inflation. The major options: 1) draconian cuts in the fat budget for fiscal 1981 and perhaps even for 1980; 2) Executive action to enact a program of credit controls that would curb the growth of bank lending to businesses or consumers; 3) a new excise tax on gasoline in order to cut energy consumption and curb the inflationary import of foreign oil; and 4) a request to Congress for permission to levy wage and price controls...
Such considerations as "morality, democracy and justice" are not values to be taken lightly. Harberger does not seem to recognize that massive repression, unemployment, hunger, and torture are social costs incurred by his Draconian monetarist measures. The ideal is not maximum possible efficiency within Harberger's limited econometric model, but the optimum degree of economic efficiency with the maximum freedom from suffering, persecution, and exploitation for everyone in the population...