Word: slowdown
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...five-year slowdown in defense spending is already hitting military contractors hard. Since 1982, the number of U.S. companies turning out hardware for the Pentagon has plummeted from 120,000 to just 40,000. At most major defense firms, profits are down and payrolls are being slashed. Los Angeles-based Northrop, which lost $78 million in the second quarter, is cutting its work force by 3,000 workers, to 41,000. St. Louis-based McDonnell Douglas (1988 defense sales: $9.7 billion), the largest U.S. military contractor, reported a loss of $48 million during the same period. If Cheney sells...
Some economists believe the slack period will be short-lived and will be followed by renewed growth, a scenario that has them searching for metaphors. David Hale, chief economist of Chicago's Kemper Financial Services, characterizes the slowdown as an "output pause." Geoffrey Moore, an economics professor at Columbia University, talks of a "stutter step." Economist Lyle Gramley, a former Fed governor, says that by late 1990 the slowdown may be followed by a period of "economic refreshment...
While soft-landing scenarios provide reassuring reading, some economists think such forecasts belong on the fiction shelf. If U.S. economic history is any guide, a soft landing is a long shot. That kind of gentle slowdown occurred only once before, in 1967, when the military buildup during the Viet Nam War fueled a demand for capital goods...
...stifling inflation without making the kind of sudden moves that could trigger a recession. The U.S. may be in for only a brief and relatively innocuous reversal like the one in 1961 rather than the painful contraction of 1981-82, when the unemployment rate averaged 8.7%. The current slowdown "is not a good thing, but it's the cost of a good thing," says economist George Stigler, a Nobel laureate and professor at the University of Chicago. Americans can only hope that if they pay now, they can fly again later...
...Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges the threat of a recession and Detroit faces slumping car sales, economists debate how painful the slowdown may become...