Word: slowdowns
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...smell the burning rubber? Savor it - it's the scent of the speeding U.S. economy squealing to a much-needed slowdown. As if to bolster the prevailing psychology of caution, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday that housing starts on multi-unit buildings, a key indicator, were down to a six-year low in March, a decidedly large drop from December's record high. Simply put, the plunge in starts means that fewer builders are breaking ground on apartment and condominium complexes...
...says TIME senior financial writer Bernard Baumohl. Housing starts, explains Baumohl, are among the most interest-sensitive components of the economy, and tend to be a particularly prescient overall financial indicator. "When interest rates go up, as they have been," says Baumohl, "the first sectors to register a slowdown are car and housing purchases." In other words, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's penchant for quarter-point hikes may have finally eased the American public's seemingly insatiable taste for big-ticket items like new real estate. And this, despite its overtones of recession, says Baumohl, can be seen as very...
...expansion is a bit of a paper tiger. The economy grew 4.1% last year and even faster in 1998, yet aside from oil prices there has been no inflation to speak of. Meanwhile, amid all the angst about overheating, there are signs of a slowdown, most noticeably in the crucial housing sector. The dollar is in fine shape. And while rising oil prices have skewed the Consumer Price Index to a three-year high, the core rate is up a very modest 2.1% for the past 12 months...
...would be disastrous for China's economic reforms and the goal of attracting investment, and Beijing's reformists had hoped that their efforts, and the fact that Hong Kong has kept its economic system despite being ruled from the mainland, would coax Taipei toward reunification. But the slowdown of China's reforming economy over the past two years has raised the threat of massive unemployment and social instability, and that has led to a political resurgence of hard-liners grouped around National People's Congress chairman Li Peng, China's number two leader, who wants reforms slowed down rather than...
...slowdown effect, of course, will make life easier for Chairman Greenspan. "If oil prices help slow the economy down to within the 3.5 percent speed limit on growth desired by Fed economists, Greenspan may not need to raise interest rates again after March," says Baumohl. "Already the stock market senses that the cumulative effect of previous rate hikes combined with the rising oil price are going to slow growth later this year." The big question, particularly for presidential candidates, will be how abrupt the slowdown will be. If the growth rate eases gently down from the current 6 percent...