Word: shock
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...question is how hard the oil shock will strike an economy that is already staggering. So far, crude-oil prices, which closed at $26.23 per bbl. last week, have jumped about 40% in recent weeks. For the moment, that is far less than the price hikes of the 1970s, which reached more than 300%. Those oil shocks gave rise to the dread combination of high unemployment and double- digit inflation, which became known as stagflation...
...spend their leisure time. Every $1-per- bbl. increase in the cost of crude oil acts like a tax to siphon income from consumers and companies. Laurence Meyer, a Washington University economist who runs his own forecasting firm in St. Louis, had predicted a recession even before the oil shock. If prices charged by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries reach $30 per bbl. in the fourth quarter, Meyer says, the GNP would decline a painful 3.6% during the period. If oil levels off at $32 per bbl. next year, he predicts that unemployment would climb...
...growing risk of a downturn increases the pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. But Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan remains wary of inflation, particularly in the face of the latest oil shock. To help persuade Greenspan that it is time to budge, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady last week repeated Administration calls for cheaper borrowing costs. "Everybody wants lower interest rates," Brady said. "At this point in time in the U.S., economic growth is very important." Concurs Lyle Gramley, a former Federal Reserve governor who is chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association: "To refuse to ease interest...
...biggest impact of the latest oil shock may be psychological. "I'm paying off all my credit cards, and I'm going to throw them all away," says Dennis Eaton, a Phoenix gas-station manager. "If we go into a recession, I'm going to be cautious and control my own destiny." But the U.S. is already in a recession by many measures, and the country's economic destiny now seems to depend on how high oil prices climb and how long they stay at painful levels...
Benazir Bhutto had always suspected that her term as Pakistan's Prime Minister would end abruptly, probably at the hands of the country's military. Even so, the news came as a shock to Bhutto last week. At 4:30 Monday afternoon, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan telephoned the Prime Minister at her official residence in Islamabad to inform her that he was dismissing her 20- month-old government under Article 58 of the constitution for "internal dissensions" and allegedly "horse trading for personal gain," among other things. "I can't believe it," she said as she hung up the phone...