Word: majority
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Inflation will run at an annual rate of 8% by next December, then slip to 7% by December 1980. A major reason for this slowdown is that the recent rate of price rises is unlikely to continue. In the first quarter alone, fuel jumped at an annual rate of 25%, and home financing, including mortgage rates, taxes and insurance, shot...
There is, however, plenty that could go wrong with this forecast. A major imponderable is the pickup in business spending for new plant and equipment. Corporations are expected to increase capital investments this year by 16%, but the rise is a mixed blessing. If, as expected, capital spending continues fairly strong through the early part of the recession, it will help cushion the slump. But if a capital investment boom develops, it could delay the recession and ultimately make it worse...
Alan Greenspan, economic consultant to major corporations, is concerned because businessmen have lately gone on an ordering spree, in an effort to build up stockpiles of parts and materials for fear of shortages ahead. He fears that inventory accumulation could be strong until the recession becomes apparent in the autumn, and then businessmen would abruptly cut back on orders, plunging the economy into a deeper slump. Says Arthur Okun, senior fellow at Brookings: "Paradoxically, we may have too much business confidence...
These people are major users of credit, taking out mortgages to acquire their bigger houses and urban condominiums and installment loans to furnish them. Maurice Mann, vice chairman of A.G. Becker, a brokerage firm, has warned savings and loan officials to anticipate "massive demand" for mortgage lending in the 1980s "as a result of the postwar babies seeking shelter." Insurance executives are looking at the group as an ever expanding market for homeowners' and life policies. Bankers are catering to their desire for convenience by opening more and more centers that can manage all aspects of a customer...
...Major metropolitan hospitals are not the only ones involved in the technology race. Jimmy Carter in April confessed that, as a member of the governing board of Georgia's Americus and Sumter County Hospital in the 1960s he had particpated in bilking his neighbors. Said the President: "We were naturally inclined to buy a new machine whenever it became available. Then we required every patient who came to the hospital to submit their body to the machine, whether they needed it or not, to rapidly defray the purchase. I did not realize then that I was ripping off people...