Word: important
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...starter, the Israeli pound was devalued an astonishing 43%, the eighth devaluation in 26 years. Imports of 29 luxury items, including autos, were banned for six months, and import taxes on 39 other luxury items were raised 10% and 20%. A six-month moratorium on the construction of all public and luxury buildings, imposed last July, was ex tended for another year. In an effort to discourage foreign travel, both the travel tax and the tax on foreign air fares were raised significantly...
...just for the oil and fertilizer supplies (the consequences of which have already been devastating). Even giving away food creates problems with production incentives and reduces attention paid to the production system. It doesn't solve the dependency question but only submerges it. At the current rate, food import requirements are estimated to rise to 85 million tons by the mid-'80s. That amounts to over $17 billion for the poor countries per year at current prices, despite the enormous proportions of exchange reserves already absorbed by past deptservicing requirements. We expect them to choose between food, fertilizer and repayment...
Furthermore, the Conference has not been able to deal substantively with the structure of food production and use in the rich nations. The purchasing power of the rich has meant the import of protein and its conversion into meat at incredible and growing rates. The export of our consumer culture, the development of export-oriented cash-crops, and the side-effects of the Green revolution involve additional distortions central to issues in which the rich nations are involved. These factors collectively inhibit, rather than promote self-reliant food supply systems in the Third World...
...once seemed. By October this year, miserable weather had reduced the harvest of corn by 16% and soybeans by 19%, while demands from the developing countries continue to mount. Merely to feed one pound of grain per person daily to their added population by 1985, they may have to import at least 85 million tons of grains, compared with 25 million tons now. Their import bill, figured at current prices, would top $17 billion for food alone; they would still have big requirements for imported technology, oil and manufactured goods...
...order to hold 1985 prices at $11 per bbl., approximately the current level, Middle East nations would have to hold production to slightly less than half what they could pump. Oddly enough, they would be doing the U.S. a kind of favor if they did follow that strategy: American imports of oil in 1985 would drop to 3.5 million bbl. a day, from 6.3 million now. Reasons: the high prices would discourage import demand, spur a vast expansion in Alaskan oil production in secondary and tertiary recovery of oil from existing fields, and in offshore oil development. It also would...