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...consumer price index for April, due out this week, will be a "disaster," warns Barry Bosworth, director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability (COWPS). May's figures will not look much better, he adds, and prices will not start to level out until June at the earliest. Partly because of last winter's blizzards, food prices climbed 16.4% in the first quarter. Beef has jumped at an annual rate of 41 % since January, and wholesale prices are spurting, meaning that retail prices will continue to rise...
Although no parliamentary seats were at stake, the elections were seen as an important index of the national mood. The results surprised even those who had expected the Christian Democrats to benefit from a wave of sympathy after Moro's murder. The party won 42.5% of the vote (up from 39% in the 1976 general election), while the Communists took only 26.5% (down from 34%). Recouping their losses of two years ago, the Socialists came in with a respectable 13.5%. The centrist Republicans and Social Democrats also gained, while the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement and the far left...
Already there are signs of shortages of skilled workers. The index of help-wanted advertising is at the highest point since tabulations began in 1951. Michigan mines and power plants cannot find enough ironworkers, pipe fitters, welders or millwrights. Allstate Insurance Co. has such difficulty hiring office help that it sends recruiters to Chicago-area high schools in search of students who are learning typing and shorthand. Says Employment Manager Charles Bashaar: "We even have the Welcome Wagon lady give a pitch for working at Allstate when she hands out gifts to newcomers in her area...
...board members expect inflation to remain high, perhaps dangerously so. Greenspan calculates that the consumer price index for April, lifted by food prices, matched March's jump of 10% at an annual rate. In the second half, however, he expects "marked slowing" in retail food prices to bring inflation down to about 6%, resulting in a rise in prices of 6.5% for the year as a whole. Sprinkel makes a grimmer projection: inflation will top 7% in every quarter of 1978 and hit 7.6% in December. Says he: "We have thrown away all the gains against inflation we made...
...service. For example, it now delivers mail to most businesses once a day rather than twice. But it still lost three-quarters of a cent on every piece of mail handled in fiscal 1977, vs. about half a cent in 1974. One reason is that, while almost every other index of the economy has been rising smartly in the past few years, the volume of mail has been stagnant. Last year the Postal Service handled 92 billion pieces of mail, barely more than the 90 billion in 1974; per capita deliveries actually declined a trifle, from 429 pieces...