Word: outputs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Slump. "The recession is on," says Walter Heller, a member of TIME's Board of Economists. The Government has made no official announcement of this (a recession is customarily defined as two quarters of declining production), but it unofficially estimated last week that national output of goods and services dropped at an annual rate of 2.4% from April through June. OPEC's oil boosts make this downturn immeasurably harder to reverse; they will drain perhaps $30 billion out of Americans' pockets by the end of 1980. Unemployment has been holding steady at just under 6% so far this year...
...other industrial countries, the situation varies. Inflation has been speeding up throughout Europe and Japan and will be accelerated further by the oil increase. But in the other six summit countries, unlike the U.S., economic growth has been showing signs of revival this year. Now output and employment will inevitably slow as petroleum prices soar. How bad will the recession that has apparently begun in the U.S. become? That depends heavily on whether OPEC can somehow be persuaded to stop the price spiral at its present point...
Backstage the Europeans were pressing for a pledge that all the industrial countries freeze oil imports through 1985 at last year's level. Unfair, protested Carter's aides. By drawing on increasing output from North Sea wells (expected to nearly double from last year to 1985), the Europeans could freeze imports from outside the Community and still burn more petroleum than ever. In the U.S., where domestic oil output has been declining (down about 700,000 bbl. a day since 1972), a freeze on imports would cause more hardship. Japan, which is totally dependent on imported oil, took the same...
...most convincing evidence that a downturn is coming is that spending by consumers, which has been the chief engine of the nation's 50-month-old recovery, is slowing substantially. The nation's output of goods and services grew by a paltry .8% in the first quarter. For April and May, industrial production actually declined, though only slightly, for the first time since January 1978. The standard forecast now is for a shallow slump lasting no more than two to three quarters...
...takeover could be highly beneficial for Chrysler, which is struggling under a $50.6 million short-term debt. The company urgently needs infusions of fresh capital to modernize old plants and increase its output of small gas-sipping models. But a Chrysler deal would make little sense for Volkswagen, which has just regained its old momentum after a long period of drift, during which Japanese automakers zipped past it in many major markets. Detroit executives point out that Volkswagen, which is the most firmly established foreign automaker in the U.S., does not need Chrysler's dealer network or antiquated plants...