Word: problem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...current housing crisis is doubtless a national problem that demands national policy changes. Next month's election is not going to make everything rosy in Central Square. Still, the elections will make an important difference...
...Harry Towns is a successful screenwriter, but not lately. His half- written play about the Spanish armada has run aground (the problem, he senses, is dramatic confrontation, or lack of it; a storm wrecked the Spanish fleet, so Sir Francis Drake and the Duke of Parma never set eyes on each other). His accountant, sounding increasingly detached, tells him that if he doesn't have a payday soon, he will have to sell his house in New York and move -- has it really come to this? -- to the green tedium of Vermont. He is reduced to pitching an idea...
...imagine a country that regularly runs annual budget deficits five times as bad as those of the U.S.; whose fiscal policy is so paralyzed by political rivalries that its national debt is equal to its gross domestic product (vs. only 50% for the U.S.); whose debt problem is so out of hand that interest payments alone amount to 8% of GDP. Compared with this, the U.S. seems almost a model of fiscal probity...
...Italian economy, however, ignores the problem. For the past six years, its annual growth rate of 3.5% to 4% has been one of Europe's highest. Inflation has come down smartly from more than 20% in 1980 to 5% last year. The lira has appreciated against most other currencies. To be sure, interest rates are still in double figures, and unemployment is stuck above 10%, but that figure is skewed by a higher jobless rate in the backward south; in the thriving north, it is lower. Overall, Italy's economic performance is sparkling. How do the Italians...
...anniversary. But the larger dilemma remains unresolved. New travel restrictions do not address the root causes of widespread popular disaffection in East Germany. "It's like taking an aspirin for a toothache," said a Western diplomat in Prague. "It may relieve the pain, but it won't fix the problem." As the rioting in Dresden made only too clear, the refugees who had the good luck to act are hardly the only ones who want out. In Leipzig, 10,000 East Germans marched through the streets demanding change and shouting the name of the man who inspires them: "Gorbi! Gorbi...