Word: leveler
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...heat, even if they are concealed or underground. The U.S. and the Soviets now relay satellite information to ground stations immediately, without the hours-long delay of earlier transmissions. The U.S. has eleven of 18 projected NAVSTAR global positioning satellites in place, allowing military units down to the platoon level to use briefcase-size sensors in plotting their own locations within a few yards. Cruise missiles travel to their targets guided by digital mapping and targeting information transmitted from satellites. The U.S. is on the verge of installing satellite-oriented targeting systems in "smart" artillery shells and short-range missiles...
Another dramatic parallel is the emergence of a new financial center where cash-laden investors are bidding wildly. In the 1920s that place was Manhattan; today it is Tokyo. In the overheated Tokyo exchange, shares are trading at about triple the level of Wall Street stocks in terms of the ratio of prices to corporate earnings. Says Eric Shubert, an international economist for Manhattan's Bankers Trust: "Lots of inexperienced people in Tokyo are playing the market; they have switched from comic books to the stock pages, just as in America in the 1920s millions of people switched from baseball...
...those parallels, today's U.S. economy is carrying a burden that was not so pervasive a problem in the 1920s. In a word: debt. America's level of borrowing among consumers, corporations and government has reached staggering heights. The current total is approaching $8 trillion, or almost twice the country's gross national product. "The increase of real debt ((adjusted for inflation)) occurred at about the same pace as real GNP growth during the '50s, '60s and '70s. But in the '80s it has occurred at double the rate," notes W. Van Bussman, a corporate economist for Chrysler. The current...
...Galbraith: "The danger is that we have accumulated under the Reagan Administration such enormous overseas obligations that these could, if liquidated, create a very, very nasty run on the dollar and also a nasty collapse of the stock market." Adding to the jitters about the dollar is the rising level of U.S. inflation. Last week the Government said the Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of 5.8% during August. Last year's pace was only...
...earnings expected this year, up 3% from 1986. Paradoxically, even though gold shipments are not banned by most sanction imposers, including the U.S., world jitters about South African political turmoil have helped boost the price of gold over the past two years, from $280 per oz. to a current level of $463. Even producers of some banned commodities have found ways to beat the rules. Many South African fishermen, for example, have reregistered their ships in the Cayman Islands, enabling them legally to ship South African lobster tails to the U.S. as Cayman produce...