Word: ploy
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...moment, these leaders are having trouble achieving a breakthrough, partly because of the uncompromising attitudes of Speaker O'Neill and President Reagan. O'Neill fears that the President's call for a "down payment" toward reducing the deficit is a ploy to force the Democrats into sharing election-year blame for the huge shortfall. Late last week, however, the Speaker declared for the first time that he would consider trimming cost of living increases in social benefits, if the President would give ground on the tax and defense issues...
High interest rates, though, helped derail the whole tactic. They drove bond prices down just when Drysdale was counting on them to go up. The ploy was exposed in May 1982, when Drysdale defaulted on $160 million in charges it owed Chase Manhattan. Ultimately the bank lost a total of $270 million in trading expenses and interest payments. During the summer of 1982 Drysdale's parent company went out of business, and Chase Manhattan took over the portfolio of Drysdale Government Securities...
PERHAPS THAT'S being a bit harsh. Perhaps these fines are a well-intentioned effort to maintain some control over student's personal lives after the in loco parentis advising structure of freshman year drops away. Perhaps, yes perhaps, it is a brilliant psychological ploy that fails only because it does not go far enough...
...film's failure to transcend conventional stereotype is as cumbersome as its reliance on stock gags and "cute" statements. Director Jordan's idea of humor--falling brooms and burning toast--is admittedly a sign of domestic chaos, but certainly an insufficient ploy to keep the audience in hysterics. Similarly, Wheaton's gratuitous use of slang phrases like "shit" and "knocked up" quickly becomes sophomoric and intellectually insulting to the audience...
Auto companies are using a scaled-down version of the bankruptcy ploy on individual plants. When Ford Motor Co failed to extract concessions from the U.A.W. at its unprofitable Rouge steelmaking operations, it announced plans to curtail production sharply. Four days later, the union accepted concessions, and the mill was kept open. When U.A.W. workers at Ford's Sheffield, Ala., aluminum-casting plant did not accept 50% wage and benefit cuts or the company's offer to sell them the plant, it was closed last June...