Word: peak
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...business activity increases and worker shortages grow more troublesome, the number of Americans on the jobless rolls remains high by historical standards. The unemployment rate stands at 7.2%, which is less than the 9.7% registered in 1982 but still well above the 5.6% reached in 1979, near the peak of the last economic expansion...
That is a heavy burden for even so rich a country as Saudi Arabia, especially since its great wealth has begun to shrink. From a peak of $113 billion in 1981, Saudi oil earnings dropped to $28 billion last year. Uncertainty over petroleum prices and revenues prompted Fahd last month to take the unprecedented step of postponing approval of the country's new budget until summer. To the Saudis, accustomed to decision making by royal decree, the delay was a sign of indecision and uncertainty at the country's highest political level...
Like the petroleum crisis of the past decade, which threatened the industrial might of the West, the oil slide is changing the balance of economic power. The price drop, from a peak of $35 per bbl. in 1981, has greatly reduced the flow of billions upon billions of dollars from consuming countries to the producers. The so-called petrodollar drain of 1979-83 had contributed to the worst global economic slump since the Great Depression. But cheap oil will act as a giant tax cut, or perhaps a lottery jackpot, for the consumers and businesses of such large industrial countries...
...price war began when Saudi Arabia got fed up with its OPEC partners. For years the kingdom, which holds about one-fourth of the world's oil reserves, tried almost single-handed to prop up prices by curbing its production. The country wound up slashing its output from a peak of 10.3 million bbl. a day in 1981 to ! a low of 2 million bbl. a day last June. During that time its annual oil revenue fell from $113 billion to $28 billion. Many of the other twelve countries in OPEC, meanwhile, conducted a thriving business by secretly cheating...
...made an estimated $41 billion in IRA deposits for 1985, an increase of 14% over last year. Most consumers waited until the last few weeks before the tax deadline, even though they could legally have made last year's contributions anytime after Jan. 1, 1985. "This is the absolute peak of IRA mania right now," declares Brian Smith, senior vice president of the U.S. League of Savings Institutions...