Word: yugoslavia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Yugoslavia is sometimes described as 100% Marxist-50% Karl and 50% Groucho. Although it is Communist, it maintains a market economy that is based on competition between state-owned but individually run companies. That zany-sounding blend of socialism and free enterprise has given the 20.5 million Yugoslavs the fastest growing economy in Eastern Europe. In major cities, modern, wide-windowed apartment complexes dot the skyline, autos clog the streets and stores are stocked with television sets, radios and kitchen appliances. Lately, however, the system has developed enough problems to bring the nation to a crossroad at which its leaders...
...Yugoslavia's economic split personality began emerging in 1950, when Marshal Josip Broz Tito rejected Soviet-style central planning in favor of economic decentralization. Under his "self-management" system, workers' councils set wage rates and product prices in each enterprise, and theoretically have the power to fire managers, who are responsible to the councils rather than to a state ministry. Kiro Gligorov, a leader of Yugoslavia's League of Communists and the nation's chief economist, explained to TIME Correspondent Strobe Talbott: "We believe that the state cannot replace private owners in the management of enterprises...
...response, the government retreated toward central control of the economy. It held down wages, froze most prices, limited credit, restricted imports and devalued the dinar twice. The program held retail-price increases in the first quarter of 1972 to an acceptable 1.3%. In March, to bolster its trading ability, Yugoslavia obtained a $ 100 million stabilization loan from a trio of New York banks: Chase Manhattan, First National City and Bankers Trust...
Foreign Cash. Yugoslavia, however, still faces a shortage of capital for industrial expansion. Despite recent growth, its companies cannot provide jobs for all workers. More than 800,000 Yugoslavs labor abroad and send more than half their pay back home...
...eager to get back the "most favored nation" trading status with the U.S., which they lost in the cold war. M.F.N. status would cut the tariffs by 50% or more on some Soviet exports. So far the U.S. has granted M.F.N. standing to only two Communist countries, Poland and Yugoslavia. Washington would be wise to extend M.F.N. treatment to all of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, to tear down trade barriers...