Word: spiraling
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...Some economists - for now a minority, to be sure - believe the U.S. is at serious risk of a deflationary spiral, even if just a quarter ago, inflation was above the Fed's comfort zone of 2% to 3%. "Compared to Japan's problem a decade ago, this crisis is unfolding much faster and spreading wider due to financial globalization," says Shanghai-based independent economist Andy Xie. A financial system unable or unwilling to lend, a tapped out U.S. consumer, and business now retrenching - and laying people off - all are a formula for possible deflation. What's so wrong with declining...
...bring yields on both long- and short-term maturities down. Further, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke went out of his way recently not to object to the possibility of further fiscal stimulus from Congress. In other words, the Fed is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at avoiding a deflationary spiral, and it's doing so more quickly than its counterparts in Tokyo did a decade ago. Disinflation - diminishing inflationary pressure across the board - is healthy for the U.S. economy. Deflation is something the U.S. doesn't want to see. And the Fed knows that better than anyone...
...intelligence community seems to share that assessment. While still a "work in progress," the National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan, due out after the U.S. elections, portrays a country on a "downward spiral," says a Pentagon official who was briefed about the report. The key reasons: a revitalized Taliban, inadequate U.S. and NATO forces, the funds generated for the Taliban by narcotics, and a government so consumed by corruption and inefficiency that it cannot offer a reasonable alternative to the insurgents...
...history, and the private sector is growing. But such good news is easily undermined by the increasing insecurity and Afghanistan's rampant corruption. Ashraf Ghani, a former Finance Minister, says his nation has reached a fork in the road. "It is not inevitable that we go to that downward spiral," he says. "If we take the right road, we can get to the destination of a stable and eventually prosperous Afghanistan...
...throwing money at the economy's problems is not without risk, and it will be interesting to see whether the Fed is able to react quickly enough in the other direction when the economy finally takes a turn for the better, and avert the inflationary spiral that Bernanke's critics have been warning about all along...