Word: straitjacket
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...Since the Government's budget-making process begins 21 months before the end of the given fiscal year, accurate forecasting is virtually impossible. Economic and budget assumptions can be doctored. All the states except one now have annual balanced-budget requirements, but they slip out of the straitjacket by capitalizing their long-term improvements, spreading the cost of bridges and highways and the like out over their useful life. The temptation to pursue such federal budgeting with mirrors would be overwhelming...
...dropping of lapels, the sloping of shoulders and strategic modification of inner structure by following the Savile Row technique of not gluing the lining to the underside of the fabric. The result, an epiphany of choreographed rumple, was like cutting the buckles and taking the stuffing from a straitjacket. Citizens out for a stroll down a sunny American boulevard, or cabbing to a cocktail party, or even (gasp!) commuting to their office, looked like first-class cruise passengers who had just unpacked for a walk around the deck. The look was liberating for some; for others, it resembled the prize...
...time. But the legacy is permanent, because the International Style created "Compounds," an entrenched dictatorship over taste centered in the Eastern universities. These Compounds wanted to impose abstract dogmas on the real world of American desires and American fantasies. Nobody since has been able to get out of this straitjacket...
...economic adviser to President Carter, thinks that the metal's allure stems from a wishful notion that financial stability can be achieved in a "fixed mechanical way," rather than by "trusting human beings." The danger, says he, is that the gold standard would put policymakers into such a "straitjacket" that they would be unable to respond to changing economic conditions. The result: even greater instability and more frequent bouts of high unemployment. Joseph Pechman, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, agrees: "I think the whole idea is nonsense. The gold bugs are recommending a disastrous route...
Tito reveled in the applause, just as he relished a number of decidedly unproletarian luxuries. He dressed in stylishly tailored suits, as well as bemedaled uniforms that Churchill once called Tito's "gold-lace straitjacket." He traveled in a Mercedes-Benz limousine, a lavish yacht and a special train; among his other perks of office were half a dozen residences, several hunting lodges and a villa on the Adriatic isle of Brioni. He savored good food and drink and had an appreciative eye for pretty women. In 1977 Tito and his third wife Jovanka, 55, had a falling...