Word: eckstein
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...keep it going at least through 1984. Growth will slow a bit but stay strong, and inflation will remain moderate. The unemployment rate will gradually fall. That was the favorable forecast of TIME'S Board of Economists, which met last week in New York City. Said Otto Eckstein, chairman of Data Resources, a Lexington, Mass., economics consulting firm: "Once the economy starts going up, the forces of recovery are so automatic that forecasters can sleep nights. It is about the only time in the business cycle when they...
...enough pace to keep the recovery going. U.S.-built cars are still selling 20% faster than they were a year ago, and other signs point to a continuation of strong consumer demand. The Reserve Board reported last week that installment debt increased a record $4.84 billion in July. Said Eckstein: "There's not much in the mill to suggest that consumer confidence is going to take a dive...
Despite the relatively bright outlook for prices, interest rates will continue to be a drag on the recovery. Eckstein pointed out that the real, or inflationadjusted, cost of borrowing money is four to five percentage points higher than the traditional level. One reason: investors and financial institutions are demanding more interest for their money because they fear that Government deficits will eventually force the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply enough to rekindle inflation. The Fed must chart a narrow course between providing too much money, which would fan inflation fears, and being too stingy, which might stall...
...manufacturers continued to lose their competitive edge over foreign firms, the country would import more and more, while exporting less. Asked Eckstein: "What would the U.S. economy look like in ten years? We could have very successful financial and service sectors, bustling French restaurants, booming Manhattan real estate, but an industrial Midwest that would lag far behind, as the South did before World...
...increase of about 1.5 percentage points in mortgage rates over the past few months, for example, has slowed the pickup in construction. The Commerce Department reported last week that new housing starts in July, at an annual rate of 1,741,000 units, were down .6% from June. Otto Eckstein, a Harvard economics professor, predicts that the housing slowdown will help reduce G.N.P. growth in the fourth quarter to a 5% annual rate. For an economy in which inflation remains a constant threat, that may be a better cruising speed than the current pell-mell pace...