Word: meaner
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Fallows dismisses Tokyo's current economic downturn as nothing more than a temporary setback, similar to those that followed the huge boost in oil prices in 1972 and the rapid appreciation of the yen in 1985. Both times the Japanese economy came back leaner and, Fallows believes, meaner than ever. Now, he says, Japan and East Asia will present an overwhelming challenge to the U.S. Although the U.S. remains the world's largest (and still most productive) national economy, Fallows predicts that unless it adopts a more interventionist national economic policy and consumes less while saving more, it will...
...China and Russia, antitank and air-defense missiles from Bulgaria, and may now be turning to West European firms for critical electronics for his air force. At the same time, he has pressed forward with Iraq's ballistic-missile research at newly built laboratories. With a leaner and meaner fighting machine of about 400,000 troops, Iraq still has the largest army in the region...
...resentment, not to mention a grab bag of criminal tricks, that -- count on it -- they will take back to the streets. "All we do," says Dr. John May, one of the 10 doctors who service the 9,000 inmates at Chicago's Cook County Jail, "is produce someone meaner and angrier and more disillusioned with himself and society...
...highly automated mining processes. Colorado financed an ambitious drive to make Denver an international hub with a new $3 billion airport. Utah restructured its copper and steel mills and absorbed their laid-off workers into gleaming new aerospace, computer-software and financial-services facilities. "The Rockies became leaner and meaner ahead of the rest of the country," says Russell Behrmann, Utah's economic- development director of administration. When the national recession hit, the states were "recession resistant -- they had some built-in antibodies...
Personally, I'm bullish on America. For all our problems -- which are considerable, to put it mildly -- we've become leaner and meaner, and our quality has improved. Exports are up. Technology races along. And the flip side of the real estate collapse is the prospect of low rents -- bad for landlords and lenders, good for business and consumers. Hopeful signs...