Word: indexable
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Potatoes were cheaper, tomatoes were cheaper-in fact, nearly all food was cheaper-but no matter how it juggled the figures, the Bureau of Labor Statistics came up last week with the sad news that the Government's Consumer Price Index inched upward in September for the 13th month in a row. The new mark was one-tenth of 1% over August, for a record high...
Higher prices for clothing, housing and most other major goods and services more than offset the substantial reduction in food prices, reported the bureau. Although the rate of increase was the lowest in ten months, thereby offering hope of a stable index in the months ahead, the September high will trigger a 1?-to-5?-an-hour wage increase for some 1,500,000 workers. It will also cause further strains on inflation-pressed family budgets across the nation; while the price index stood 3.4% higher than a year ago, another Labor Department report showed factory workers' buying power...
...wholesale food prices were up 54% in two years) that the government has had to slash its vital five year plan and bombard all capitals with supplicating cries for investment cash. Brazilians' living costs have more than trebled since 1950; Chileans' have risen twelvefold. Britain's index has shot up 43% in seven years, and France's latest 10%-20% price zoom for food and consumer goods has already wiped out any hoped-for gain from last summer's devaluation of the franc...
...this global sea of inflationary troubles there is one major island where enterprise, aided by record-breaking production, has achieved a basic stability of consumers' prices. In West Germany the cost-of-living index was up a modest 16 points from 1950 levels. This truncated republic, about half the size of the old German Reich and with about three-quarters of its population (53 million), looms as the economic wonder of the democratic West. The Germans' own astonishing energy and some $5 billion in timely U.S. aid have wrought their great part in what is universally hailed...
...European country that has done the best job of holding down inflation is Germany (see FOREIGN NEWS), whose cost-of-living index rose only 6% since 1953, while production increased 60%. With far fewer economic strains to contend with, Switzerland has held to a 5% rise. Britain has had a 16% rise in that time, now hopes its "hard pound" policy, expressed in courageously raising the discount rate from 5% to 7%, will finally check inflation, permit Britain to build up the gold and dollar reserves it needs to act as banker for the sterling area. In Asia, Japan...