Word: gargantuanism
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Never in history have so many nations owed so much money with so little promise of repayment. At stake is a gargantuan debt, a $706 billion lien held by banks, governments and international financial institutions around the world against a group of deeply troubled developing and East bloc countries. It is a sum nearly the size of the annual U.S. budget and more than three times that of Japan's; it is $154 for every man, woman and child on earth. It has mushroomed from about $ 100 billion only twelve years ago, keeping borrowers in bondage and lenders...
...most worrisome part of the budget is the gargantuan Social Security program, which accounts for more than 25% of federal spending. Projections show that the trust funds from which benefits are paid will run out of cash in early 1984. For nearly a year a special 15-member bipartisan commission appointed by President Reagan and Congress has been studying ways to ensure the solvency of the Social Security system, and the group is expected to issue a final report soon...
...effort to halt the slide, Saudi officials have been pressuring OPEC's discounters to stop their cheating on prices and production. If necessary, the Saudis recently began hinting, Riyadh would start price cutting, offering gargantuan discounts that would drive all other exporters from the market...
...managed to stage a performance inside one of them as it traveled to the dam site. Itaipu's reservoir has submerged more than 563 sq. mi. of tropical forests and farm land, and also drowned one of South America's most impressive natural cataracts, Sete Quedas. As gargantuan as Itaipu's physical dimensions is its potential output of 12,600 megawatts. That is twice the power of the Grand Coulee and six times that of Egypt's Aswan High...
...demonstrated by last week's economic news, a maddeningly familiar mixture of plus and minus signs. The pluses: lower interest rates, higher housing starts, more stock-market exuberance. Big minus: very sluggish production. The Congress to be chosen next week will have to decide how to trim gargantuan budget deficits that threaten to choke off the recovery whenever it does come...