Word: firm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Stanford economist Timothy Bresnahan argues that this is more a problem with PCs than with large business computers, where upgrades are handled by professional managers. But changing systems can be a serious problem for medium-size businesses too. Insurance Management Associates, a commercial insurance brokerage firm, has just laid out more than $1 million to install a new computer operating system. In the Denver office alone, says president Robert Cohen, "we had 2,500 hours of training for 70 employees and kept the business running while handling the usual glitches and two-hour breakdowns, as well as the three days...
...annually, and the sag is virtually certain to continue into next year. Given the continuing spread of the global financial crisis, from which the U.S. can no longer stay immune, "there must be a big slowdown," says Allen Sinai, chief global economist of Primark Decision Economics, a major forecasting firm. And next year, if the board's majority opinion is correct, the slowdown should cross the line into a growth recession. That is usually defined as a continuing increase in national output of goods and services, but one too puny to keep unemployment from rising...
Noting that the U.S. until now has enjoyed a "Goldilocks economy"--not too hot, not too cold, just right--David Wyss, chief economist of Standard & Poor's DRI, the economic-consulting firm, poses this question: "Will the bears eat Goldilocks?" (As in the fairy tale, there are three bears--the Asian, Russian and Wall Street varieties.) His answer: It's a toss-up. Right now Wyss sees a fifty-fifty chance of an outright recession before the end of the year 2000. Wyss would have shifted the odds to favor recession if the Federal Reserve had continued to hold...
Should that happen, the TIME board's numerical forecasts are not spectacularly gloomy. Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the giant investment firm, foresees the growth in gross domestic product slowing to an annual rate of 3.2% by the end of this year--vs. 3.9% for all 1997--and then to 2.5% by the end of 1999. Sinai expects 1.5% for all 1998, then...
...credibility of the capitalist discipline they've sold to emerging markets during the past decade, a discipline now crumbling from Moscow to Malaysia. "They're seeing Brazil's struggle as a crucial stand for the orthodox model," says Emily Alejos, vice president for emerging markets at BEA Associates investment firm in New York City. And because it is the linchpin of the dynamic South American market, Alejos adds, "letting Brazil succumb to the global contagion would mean Argentina, Chile and other Latin American countries following on its heels...