Word: leveller
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Blocks of bright new stores have appeared amid the ruins of West German cities; rings of huge sausages festoon the show windows of butcher shops. Even the sidewalk vendor of frankfurters has reappeared in Frankfurt. West German industrial production stands at 87% of the 1936 level, steel output has soared to nine million tons a year. But the anniversary triumph requires a damper of caution. West Germany is beset by some alarming economic difficulties...
...rivers to produce light and power. They opened coal mines, built industrial plants (sugar, cement, aluminum, etc.), developed fertilizers and irrigation so that the farmer could produce more rice. Today the island's industrial output is only 60% of prewar. Cement, necessary for reconstruction of cities gutted and leveled by U.S. warplanes, brings outrageous prices on the black market; manufacturers refuse to produce because the government has pegged prices below production costs. Other industries are shut down because replacement parts are not available. Formosa's railroads are still on time, mostly because their Japanese-trained crews are still...
...domestic price level has been falling since last September. That means that a dollar buys more than it did last year. This, in turn, means that a pound buys still less, relative to $4.03, than it did a year ago. In other words, any British price tag, unchanged for a year, is now really higher because the dollars needed to buy the pounds to buy the article are worth more than they were before...
Explained one sardonic sewersnipe: "I live here for my health. I have heart trouble and the doctor told me I should live at sea level." One sewer had a sign reading: "For Rent; Ten Cruzeiros." The "proprietor" said he rented the place at night "to couples." The police hauled 15 sewer-dwellers to jail, carted away two truckloads of makeshift furniture and cooking utensils, and unplugged the sewers...
Those who were bullish on both the stock market and the U.S. economy took new hope last week. As the week opened, the market gave investors a bad scare. The Dow-Jones industrial average skidded to 161.60, right through the critical level that many a chartist thought would indicate a full-grown bear market. By such charts, the market should have kept going down. Instead, by week's end, it bounced right up again to 163.78. The market showed enough bounce, in fact, to make some Wall Streeters wonder whether, after months of sliding, it had finally reached...