Word: spiraling
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...both sides increased their nuclear firepower by several orders of magnitude. It was a classic vicious spiral. Neither nation wanted to be on the losing side of an overkill gap. Wildly excessive, not to mention expensive, programs were justified on both sides in the interests of preserving a "balance of terror." Nonetheless, the nightmare of actual war receded somewhat into the subconscious of civilization. Partly because of the scare that Kennedy and Khrushchev had given the world over Cuba, the U.S. and the Soviet Union buckled down to the serious pursuit of agreements that would diminish the chances of nuclear...
...remembered for, the presidency of Ronald Reagan has already been firmly linked with one happy economic achievement: the start of the wind-down of the longest sustained inflationary surge in the nation's history. A year ago, the woozy U.S. economy was wobbling atop a seemingly endless inflationary spiral, traumatizing families everywhere with the vision of a lifetime of work and savings being eroded to nothing by the whirlwind of runaway prices...
...Nothing did more to propel inflation ever higher during the 1970s than the success of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in raising the benchmark price of a barrel of crude from $1.80 in 1970 to $34 now. Besides the skyrocketing increases in retail prices of gasoline, the spiral helped drive up everything from apartment rents, which are affected by fuel costs, to the price of food, which is hauled to supermarkets in diesel-burning trucks...
Poor, poor OPEC, Buchwald went on, needling the oil producers, who have ballooned their prices from $3 to as high as $41 per bbl. in eight years, swelled their treasuries unimaginably, twice plunged the industrialized world into recession and contributed to an inflationary spiral that is unmatched in peacetime history. Now that those producers have impaled themselves on a horn of plenty, Buchwald urged Americans to have a heart and to "do unto them what they have done unto...
...technical expertise--repeatedly grabbed the ear and approval of judges and regulators. Harvard was repeatedly told to prove that the diesel engines for the plant--which would be the largest of its kind in North America--would not choke Boston. To Harvard's dismay, the hearings triggered a spiral of unforeseen delays and escalating costs...