Word: sharp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...week's end the House handed the President a sharp defeat by approving a defense authorization bill that turned his priorities upside down. By a vote of 261 to 162, the House slashed spending for four major strategic weapons while reinstating the F-14D and the V-22. The House decided to restrict production of the controversial B-2 bomber to just four planes during the next two years, and to authorize those only if the Bush Administration agrees to scale back its $70 billion program. The House also chopped $1.8 billion from the Administration's $4.9 billion request...
...cause -- of a decade of willful denial of the realities of white-black relations. Race remains near the surface of American life, but it is almost always publicly viewed through narrow prisms: a legal wrangle over affirmative action, a political campaign, an isolated incident of racial violence. Sharp disagreements about the origins and implications of the alarming growth of the black underclass and fears of drug-related crime have widened a gulf of mutual incomprehension between the races. Even in private discourse, whites and blacks have lost the capacity to talk to each other honestly about the subject that divides...
Inventories of unsold cars have swollen to 1.8 million vehicles. At current sales levels, that is a 75-day supply, well above what is considered healthy, and Detroit is finally acknowledging the sharp downturn in demand and cutting production plans for the rest of the year. Output at General Motors assembly plants in the third quarter will be the lowest of any July-September period in 19 years, Chrysler's the smallest in a decade. While none of the automakers are scheduling long-term shutdowns, many workers are being idled for the first time since the last recession. Ford, which...
...recession does occur, it may well be triggered by a sharp erosion in consumer confidence. Americans are saddled with hefty debt loads and could easily become jittery if the economy weakens. Says Doris Drury, president of the Center for Business and Economic Forecasting in Denver: "I'm leery of debt. If we could have a recession on the order of 1981 or '82, that could be a real problem." Consumer debt has increased from $1.7 trillion to $3.3 trillion since the expansion began in late 1982. If Americans cut back abruptly on their spending, the effects would ripple through...
George Bush's march across the Continent last week threw into sharp relief two major and intersecting historic trends. His foray into Poland and Hungary highlighted how Eastern Europe, at least in part, is tumbling toward greater independence from its Soviet overlords. His attendance at the Paris summit of industrialized nations at week's end illustrated, less intentionally, how Western Europe similarly continues to become more independent of the U.S. And Bush's skimpy aid offerings in Warsaw and Budapest showed that as the waning of the cold war hastens these shifts in Europe's tectonic plates...