Word: prop
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...edges of this huge market are the free-lancers. They buy anywhere % they can, sometimes from Communist countries. Nor are they often choosy about their customers: some seem to have dealt with both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. Since 1980, that conflict has put a huge prop under a sagging business. The arms trade has been falling off in recent years, partly because world weapons pipelines are full and partly because governments are increasingly crowding the individual dealers out of what sales opportunities are left. But the demand from the Persian Gulf combatants for weapons to use against each...
...Hollywood did not really need an epitaph, but Mogul David O. Selznick produced one anyway, appropriately overblown, in a moody conversation with Ben Hecht: "Hollywood's like Egypt, full of crumbling pyramids . . . It'll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands...
...historic petroleum price plunge of 1986 could be traced to September 1985, when Saudi Arabia got fed up with its dwindling share of the world's oil market and decided to reverse completely its traditional strategy of holding back production to prop up prices. Oil Minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani raised crude output from about 2 million bbls. a day to 4 million bbls. with the aim of forcing rival oil producers like Britain to cut back to make room for the Saudis. But when competitors refused to budge, the world's oil glut rapidly increased and discounting became rampant...
...wigs have gathered for The Inquisition. The First Assistant Director accuses the Prop Master of padding his budget figures with alcohol purchases. The Cinematographer accuses the Make-Up man of making the actors too ugly to film. The Accountant insults the Caterer's coffee. Anarchy reigns...
America's allies, who would prefer that the U.S. restrain domestic demand by cutting its budget deficit, jawboned back. European finance ministers and central bankers met on Sept. 21 at the Scottish resort of Gleneagles, and word leaked that the Europeans might intervene to prop up the greenback. The dollar thereupon rebounded...