Word: slowdowns
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...talking, of course, about housing. Consumers, as you may have heard, account for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity and have been the savior of the slowdown thus far, spending more than worried economists thought they would, for a longer time. And the savior of the consumer has been the housing market...
...staff. But the growth, especially in big cities, happened so quickly that many facilities could not fill their beds. So companies have put on the brakes: construction is at its lowest level in five years. This has allowed facilities, says Wayne, "to focus on what's important." But the slowdown has left many assisted-living companies short of cash. And allegations of neglect have sparked a surge of liability lawsuits, driving up liability-insurance costs as much as 800%. Wall Street, in response, has fled. Alterra's stock, as high as $33 a share in January 1999, now sells...
There has been a steady drumbeat of bad news on the job front in Europe. Just last month, the Swiss engineering firm ABB announced 12,000 layoffs, 8% of the company's workforce. Infineon, Europe's second-largest chipmaker, said it is downsizing 5,000 workers because of a slowdown in the electronics sector. Ericsson, Sweden's big telecom equipment provider, said it would stop making mobile phones - a decision that will put 2,600 out of work in southern Sweden. In fact, in just a single week in late July, European companies announced a total of 30,000 layoffs...
...Well, there it is: ten months and six Fed interest rate cuts into this slowdown, inflation is nowhere in sight. Friday, the Labor Department reported that the PPI - the Producer Price Index, which measures commodities prices - fell 0.9 percent in July, its biggest decline since August 1993 and a whole lot more than the 0.3 percent forecasters had settled on. (Those guys seem to be wrong an awful lot lately, don?t they? Maybe somebody should...
...manufacturing recession, a profits recession, an earnings recession and a capital-investment recession, and probably a few others. But thanks to the stolid materialism of the U.S. consumer, who accounts for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, the U.S. on the whole can still call this thing a slowdown, or as Alan Greenspan likes to call it, "a period of sub-par growth." Both of which are much nicer terms - and both of which are likely be the terms du jour well into 2002. And that?s if the consumers keep bailing...