Word: indexes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...specter of double-digit inflation is fading fast. Indeed, the Consumer Price Index., which was bounding up at a 14% annual rate as recently as last September, rose at a mere 3.7% pace in January. Economists now freely predict that the February figure, to be announced this week, will show an equal or even more modest increase. A few are timidly speculating that it might actually drop for the first time in 16 years...
...Three indexes of producer (wholesale) prices-for finished goods, partly processed materials and raw commodities-really did fall in February, the first time that all went down simultaneously since February 1975. Moreover, the slowdown has been going on long enough that it cannot be dismissed as a fluke. The Producer Price Index for finished goods, those ready to be stocked on store shelves, has been declining fairly steadily and significantly since January...
...main categories: boosting the federal excise tax on retail gasoline sales, now at 4? per gal., and enacting an import surcharge on foreign oil. Increasing retail gasoline prices would surely help to hold down consumption of automotive fuel, but since gasoline is an important component in the Consumer Price Index, the tax would also translate directly into more inflation. Worse, the levy would do little to boost production of domestic crude oil and have no effect at all on discouraging foreign imports...
Other statistics embroidered the picture of deepening decline. The index of leading indicators, those measurements of the economy that are thought to give the best clues to the future, dropped .6% in January, its ninth straight downward move. The index would have fallen a shocking 2.8% if Government statisticians had not decided to exclude from the calculations a sharp decline in the length of the average work week, on the questionable ground that severe weather in January had distorted that figure. New orders received by American factories fell 1.2% in January, despite a sharp rise in orders received by defense...
...signs that had given hope for an early recovery from recession have disappeared. The Government initially reported small rises in retail sales and in the index of leading indicators for December. Rechecking the figures, it now finds that it was wrong. Both went down in December...