Word: ruinous
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Agriculture. Farmers traditionally borrow heavily in order, among other things, to finance planting and machinery purchases, paying off the loans when they sell their crops. For some, the costs are becoming ruinous. In northwest Wisconsin, Walter Betzel grossed $100,000 last year from his 350 acres of corn and oats and his 30 milk cows. Some $19,000 of the amount went right off the top for interest payments. After his interest and other operating expenses, Betzel had $5,000 left to spend on his wife and three children. Says he: "We're sick...
...President's problem is painfully real: how to convince a sudden rash of skeptics that he can balance the budget by fiscal 1984 as he has promised, thus avoiding both ruinous inflationary deficits and a continuation of the towering interest rates that threaten a new recession (see ECONOMY AND BUSINESS). Moreover, the now apparent inadequacy of the first series of budget cuts addressed to that goal has forced the Administration into an agonizing internal debate: how to reconcile the budget-balancing pledge with Reagan's equally heartfelt promise to launch a gargantuan military buildup...
...those East Coast and West Coast cities whose inhabitants like to think of themselves as civilized, no longer have the slightest tolerance for ice cream ordinaire. An unpresumptuous little chocolate ripple does not interest them; they want presumption. And to say that they are willing to pay ruinous prices for it-$7 a quart for hand-packed ice cream is not unheard of-is to understate the case. They demand the right to pay these prices...
Defense Production. The defense industry's shortcomings could turn the whole rearmament program into a paper tiger. Defense contractors can produce weapons even at today's slow pace only with ruinous cost overruns. The contractors blame the military for constantly revising plans; the Pentagon blames the contractors for slovenliness and inefficiency. Meanwhile, production lead times stretch out: the order-to-delivery time for Pratt & Whitney's F-100 aircraft engine, for example, has lengthened from 19 to 38 months in the past two years. Experts warn that the industry does not have the capacity to build arms at the pace...
...reality of Reagan's deep budget cuts began to hit home, the party's young bulls clamored for O'Neill to lead a counterattack. But the Speaker had decided months ago on a different strategy. It would be ruinous, he figured, for Democrats to attack so popular a President. Instead, he would give Reagan all he wanted, sit back and watch the President fail. It was a precarious, cynical approach, and O'Neill would never admit publicly that his objective was, in effect, to lose now and win later by default. So devoted...