Word: ratchets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...will be nastier than it's ever been," says a U.S. official. "What we're seeing is both sides gearing up for this new phase." The only players who so far seem uninfected by the war bug are the contras. While the CIA and the Sandinista Popular Army ratchet up their plans for what Ortega warns may be "another Viet Nam," the rebels seem content to idle away the hours in their Honduran camps. Two weeks ago, contra military leaders, packing showy chrome and gold-plated pistols, celebrated the reappearance of CIA officials at rebel headquarters near the Honduran capital...
...their lineups of six team members in inverse ratio to their accomplishment. The weakest competitor in a given event goes first, and his score becomes the base with which the rest are compared. If the first scores well and the second a bit better, the judges' scores ratchet up until, finally, the top performer goes out last in hopes of building on a base now escalated...
...A.N.C. has caused millions of dollars in damage but only eight deaths. The Pretoria bombing, however, which took place in a crowded commercial district at the end of the workday, seemed designed to cause as many casualties as possible. "The Southern Africa conflict has just moved up a ratchet," said Peter Vale of the respected South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg. Said the Rev. Desmond Tutu, the black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg: "One act merely provokes another, and we are probably getting into a spiral of violence we cannot stop...
Much of the support for the tax stems from a fear that OPEC will reunite, ratchet oil prices back up, an deliver yet another stunning oil shock to the economy. This fear is wholly unfounded. If OPEC were really in control of the oil market, it could just reduce production to keep prices up. OPEC cannot do this, because it now controls only 43 percent of the West's oil supply, as opposed to 60 percent in 1979. OPEC's coherence derived from Saudi Arabia's ability to unilaterally set the price of oil; in the past two years...
...elsewhere in the budget, and thus increase the need for federal borrowing. Interest-rate pessimists like investment bank Economists Henry Kaufman of Salomon Bros, and Albert Wojnilower of First Boston Corp., who have been nicknamed Dr. Doom and Dr. Gloom along Wall Street, assert that the prime rate could ratchet up at least above its peak of 21.5% and possibly as high as 25% before the end of the year...