Word: prior
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week's meeting underscored again the weakened role of Saudi Arabia inside OPEC. While that country still pumps one-third of all OPEC production, it can no longer solely determine world oil policy. Prior to the Iranian revolution, Saudi Arabia virtually dictated crude prices because it had surplus production and could threaten to drive the cost of crude down if the other countries did not follow its lead. Now the Saudis are pumping oil at the rate of 9.5 million bbl. per day, which is 1 million more than before the fall of the Shah of Iran...
This recession has a character very different from the last one, which started in 1973. Aggravating the earlier plunge was a buying spree by businesses during the boom just prior to the recession. When the economy started to grow stagnant, firms were suddenly forced to cut back inventories, thus causing the economic avalanche. The present slide has been triggered almost exclusively by a cutback in consumer spending. Sometime in late winter Americans simply closed their wallets and snapped shut their purses. Sales of everything from autos and home appliances to airline tickets have dropped sharply...
...broad consensus in Congress and the Pentagon that the members of today's armed forces do not match those of the days before the volunteer force. The education level of recruits has been dropping as the services strain to meet recruiting quotas. While 68% of the enlistees without prior military service had high school diplomas in the first half of fiscal 1979, this year only 58% do. Although some combat officers argue persuasively that a ninth-grade dropout may still make a good soldier, top military leaders today yearn to get better educated recruits. Said Army Deputy Chief of Staff...
...Powers says. He calls the 10-9-8 deal "generous and above average," particularly in view of presidential wage guidelines and in relation to comparable labor markets. But the administration's approach to negotiations this year did not signify a radical departure from the attitude that engendered the unrest prior to 1978. Powers' bargaining method proved unbending and hard-line; he said in September that Harvard was not prepared to underwrite increased costs to the workers caused by inflation and rising fuel prices, and presented the 10-9-8 in a take-it-or-leave-it manner, union officials claim...
...Korean troops are joined in a combined command, and in theory this gives the U.S. some control over more than half of South Korea's 600,000-man armed forces. But such authority can amount to very little. General Chun himself flagrantly ignored a Korean-American agreement on prior consultation last December, when he ordered reserve units to help him arrest some 40 rival officers. More cooperatively, the Seoul government last week asked General John Wickham Jr., U.S. commander of the joint forces, to release some Korean units under his command for "crowd control and internal security." He obliged...