Word: steels
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...Steel was the sickest of the smokestack industries. Despite the recovery, steel companies lost $1.668 billion in the first nine months of the year. With 250,000 members on layoff, the United Steelworkers has felt as if it were pinned under an I beam. In March the union took a 9% pay cut, but that did not satisfy management. U.S. Steel threatened this month to shut down five plants, either partially or completely, unless employees accept further contract concessions...
...plotting in Flashdance was as loose as the dancing, but, says Dawn Steel, the Paramount executive in charge of shepherding the film, "it was not designed to be a video movie. It happened to have a modular structure. The modules were interchangeable-they were even moved around in the editing-and that's what made the movie adaptable to MTV." Indeed, the theme from Flashdance, fitted out with appropriate clips from the movie, was an MTV smash. The Flashdance phenomenon was a confluence of good commercial instincts and some savvy guesswork, and now that Hollywood has found...
Reich advocates bringing these activities out "from under the table." He argues that both declining industries like steel and emerging ones like robotics should be given Government assistance only in exchange for accepting industrial-policy coordination. Fading industries like steel, which are demanding protection from foreign competitors, might be given temporary relief from imports if managers and workers accepted pay cuts and more flexible work rules. Whenever high-tech firms receive Government help, Reich would like to see them match public funds for research ventures with their own spending and make commitments to keep R. and D. operations...
...financed job-retraining programs, Schultze warned that a "coordination" program would almost surely increase protectionism and unwarranted subsidies. Said he: "A Government agency that explicitly tries to sit there and say, 'The cotton industry can live but the wool-textile industry will die' or 'The Youngstown steel plant can be rehabilitated but the Weirton plant must close' will be a terrible mistake." The invisible hand of the free market, Schultze said, should make the decisions about industrial structure, even though the "choices will be imperfect...
...major romantic-opera composers, along with enriching the repertory, each toughened the requirements for those who perform their music. In addition to the usual considerations of vocal agility and purity of tone, Wagner demanded endurance, a prodigious memory and a sound that could cut like hot steel through his dense orchestrations. Puccini required singers capable of searing dramatic flights, coupled with limpid lyricism. And Richard Strauss, envisioning his ideal Salome, was only partly joking when he asked for a 16-year-old with the voice of Isolde. No wonder then that outstanding interpreters of such operatic peaks as Briinnhilde, Turandot...