Word: modai
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Israel's government officials, who have tenuously united the nation's two major political parties in a 19-month old coalition, are playing a frantic game of musical cabinet seats to salvage the unity coalition. It all began when Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, engineer of the miraculous plan that tightened up Israel's inflation-racked economy, flung insults at Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Peres felt he had to respond; but if he dismissed Modai, the rightest Likud officials threatened to leave the coalition Cabinet...
Then, compromise Israeli style. Likud bloc leader and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir volunteered to switch jobs with his Likud cohort Modai. Negotiator turned money man, and vice versa. Peres will save face by playing tough guy with Modai, Shamir will patch together the coalition until the rotation agreement lands him the premiership this October, Modai will stay in the Cabinet and assume what is said to be his dream job. Everbody's happy. Unless conniving politicos get their way, that...
...With Modai at the helm, the unity government revitalized the inflation-racked country's economy. Israel implemented austere wage-price controls that trounced on the more than 400 percent inflation each year, lowering it to a bearable 20 percent. For the first time in a decade, 61 percent of the Israeli public approved of the government's economic policy, according to a poll by the Smith Research Center. Only the Labor-Likud combo can take credit for such effective fiscal policy...
...leader during the next 25 months while Shamir serves as Foreign Minister and acting Prime Minister; for the following 25 months, the two men will switch jobs. Yitzhak Rabin, who was Labor Prime Minister from 1974 to 1977, will be Defense Minister during the entire 50-month term. Yitzhak Modai, until last week the Likud government's Energy Minister, will head the crucial Finance Ministry. Ariel Sharon, the Likud politician who was forced to resign from his job as Defense Minister in 1983, will be Minister of Industry and Trade...
...dimensions of the problem have provoked alarm within the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. At a Cabinet meeting last month, Energy Minister Yitzhak Modai charged that the situation was "catastrophic." Last week, after four days of wrangling, the Cabinet unveiled a package of austerity measures designed to reduce the $1.6 billion budget deficit. It agreed to cut spending by $526 million, mostly in defense and welfare. It also decided to raise taxes on travel and certain government benefits...