Word: low
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That speech is remembered well by the kintandeiras, the hard-nosed Angolan businesswomen who have traditionally bought food wholesale and sold retail at the marketplace. In recent weeks they have been on strike, protesting against the low retail prices set by the government. Swordfish, for example, is listed at about 200 a pound at the market, and is unavailable. But a few lucky consumers get swordfish from fishermen friends, who peddle their catch out on the "island," the curving sand peninsula that protects Luanda harbor from the sea. There, a pound of swordfish goes for about 45¢ or 55?...
...wrong enemy. The economy proved capable of growing without new stimulus. Once the mountainous winter snows had melted, real G.N.P. surged at an unsustainable annual rate of 8.7%. Unemployment fell faster than Government economists believed possible, from 7% as recently as August 1977 to a four-year low of 5.7% in June. When the Council of Economic Advisers met in late March, says one member, "the numbers just did not add up. We had underestimated the inflationary pressure by a wide margin...
...been reduced from the original $60.6 billion to $38.9 billion, and in fiscal 1980 the President has pledged to shrink it to $30 billion or less. To do so while also increasing defense spending he will have to cut some civilian programs-public service jobs, antipollution grants, subsidized low-income housing-and give up or delay some new initiatives. National health insurance? Not until 1983. Welfare reform? Under current plans, no money for it. Members of the Board of Economists fear that even if Congress accepts all this shrinkage, a recession nonetheless will push the deficit up to $50 billion...
Thus that first sign of an overextended consumer, a rise in loan delinquency rates, has yet to occur. Mortgage loan delinquencies are at an alltime low, reports Claude Pope, the head of the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the "loan collector" who used to break the thumbs of widows and orphans has been renamed a "loan counselor." But if the economy slows as expected next year, it is going to take an awful lot of counseling to advise the American people about how to carry a trillion dollars of debt...
DIED. George S. Brown, 60, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1974-78); of cancer; at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. A 1941 graduate of West Point, Brown became a pilot in the Army Air Corps and, among other missions, helped lead the celebrated low-level B-24 bombing raid on the oil fields of Ploesti, Rumania, in 1943. He was director of operations for the Fifth Air Force during the Korean War, served as military assistant to the Secretary of Defense (1959-63), and in 1968 became responsible for the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia...