Word: roaches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Should that happen, the TIME board's numerical forecasts are not spectacularly gloomy. Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the giant investment firm, foresees the growth in gross domestic product slowing to an annual rate of 3.2% by the end of this year--vs. 3.9% for all 1997--and then to 2.5% by the end of 1999. Sinai expects 1.5% for all 1998, then...
Wyss is more pessimistic. He forecasts a GDP increase for all 1999 of only 1.5% and an unemployment rate rising to around 5% by the end of next year, and then 5.5% by late 2000. (Roach guesses 5% a year from now, and Sinai 5.3% by mid-1999.) Those estimates are all significantly higher than August's 4.5%, not to mention the 28-year low of 4.3% touched last April and May. It would be anything but bad, however, for a period of "growth recession." Even a 5.5% jobless rate would be lower than any the U.S. achieved between August...
...that was before last week's drop in the stock market, which fostered a sense that slower growth lies ahead. And the wealth effect could greatly worsen matters if stocks really hit the skids. "We've got a market that's doubled in the last three years," says Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. "If you lose 10% or 20% after doubling, that's not real pain. But if you take this correction into the 25% range, the market could hurt more going down than it helped going up." That's because people often feel worse about...
There are skeptics. Stephen Roach, chief global economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, suspects that e-commerce is being oversold, though he admits it's growing rapidly. "I question if it'll ever be big." He is right when he notes that e-commerce is no more than 1% of the U.S.'s $8.5 trillion economy; in fact, consumer online sales now account for only .2% of total retail. And e-commerce, Roach argues, is hardly on a par with the Industrial Revolution. "This is an intangible cerebral revolution, which is a lot harder to pull...
...hoping for a ripple effect, where customers buying Win98 will throw in extra bits of hardware or software that's billed as working especially well with Windows 98. CompUSA even had mimes at its Manhattan store at midnight attempting to entice cultured shoppers. Maybe they should have tried free Roach Motels...