Word: slowdown
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This new investment atmosphere has been brought on by continued high interest rates and an abrupt slowdown in inflation. Consumer prices rose 10.3% in 1981, and most economists expected only a slightly lower rise this year. Instead, prices inched up at a yearly rate of just 1% during the first three months, and most experts now expect that the 1982 inflation rate will be between 5% and 6%. Further evidence of the slowdown came last week, when the Government reported that wholesale prices rose at an annual rate of only .9% in April...
...action in a wage dispute, has already helped stiffen the resolve of employers in contract talks. Wages and benefits account for some two-thirds of all U.S. business costs, and the emerging pattern of wage restraint in key industries, such as autos, trucking and airlines, strongly suggests that the slowdown in inflation is now beginning to chip away at the so-called core, or underlying, rate of price increase...
...critics attempt to cut $11.3 billion in funds slated for the B-l strategic bomber and two nuclear aircraft carriers. The budget trimmers got some moral support from Gerald Ford, who said last week that it was "hogwash" to think that U.S. security would be endangered by a slowdown in weapons procurement. Said he: "The Soviet Union isn't going to attack the U.S. because you deliver in one fiscal year three less B-l bombers. That's baloney...
Three indexes of producer (wholesale) prices-for finished goods, partly processed materials and raw commodities-really did fall in February, the first time that all went down simultaneously since February 1975. Moreover, the slowdown has been going on long enough that it cannot be dismissed as a fluke. The Producer Price Index for finished goods, those ready to be stocked on store shelves, has been declining fairly steadily and significantly since January...
...part, the slowdown is the result of luck with the weather, which has produced bin-busting crops for several years. In the 1970s, food prices often kept right on rising rapidly even when crops were huge, but that is no longer happening. Export demand has somewhat abated as good crops in many nations have bolstered world supplies. Meanwhile, high interest rates have made it prohibitively expensive for farmers to maintain large storage operations, and as food has been pushed onto the market, prices have slumped. Finally, says Gene Sullivan, director of regional economics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta...