They were facing increased poverty, a stagnant economic situation and a slowdown in economic growth resulting from the debt crisis of the early 1980s.

Many influential economists are now worried that the US faces anemic growth and secular stagnation, owing to a persistent gap between aggregate demand and full employment. Stagnant middle class incomes imply weak aggregate demand, which in turn means slack labor markets and stagnant wages for most workers.

Moreover, economic growth is expected to be modest in 2005 due to stagnant employment opportunities, a continued downsizing of the international presence and a decline in bilateral and multilateral assistance.

In the face of relatively stagnant markets, volatile prices and declining terms of trade, investment dropped further, diversification stalled and productivity remained stagnant.

In the United States, since 2001 we've had five years of economic growth, five years of productivity growth in the workplace, but median wages are stagnant and the percentage of working families dropping below the poverty line is up by four percent.

Looking to the future, growing income inequality and stagnant incomes for the majority of Americans mean weaker aggregate demand and slower growth. Even more important, income inequality constrains economic growth on the supply side through its adverse effects on educational opportunity and human capital development.

And when you get stagnant water, you get mosquitoes.

Energy shocks contributed to a lethal combination of stagnant economic growth and inflation, and every US president since Nixon likewise has proclaimed energy independence as a goal. But few people took those promises seriously.

Tonga's performance on the Human Development Index and the Human Poverty Index reflects a high level of expenditure in health and education, stagnant population growth and sustained high levels of investment in the social sector.

In fact, the employment generated by the tradable sector has been in services at the upper end of the distributions of value added per person, education, and income. As a result, growth and employment in the tradable sector have gone separate ways, with healthy growth and stagnant employment.

The stagnant incomes of the majority of US workers are undermining economic growth on the demand side (by discouraging household consumption) and on the supply side (through adverse effects on educational opportunity, human capital development, and innovation). It is time to take action to promote stronger and more equitable growth.

And many think that these countries are stagnant, but they are not.

TOKYO The eurozone is facing a bleak economic outlook, with growth remaining stagnant and the threat of deflation looming large. The economist Martin Feldstein, who was skeptical of the initiative from the start, now calls it a failure.

Japan s plunge in the second quarter was blamed on a sales tax hike. Europe s stagnant growth in the second quarter has been explained away as an aberration reflecting the confluence of weather effects and sanctions imposed on Russia.

Indeed, such attitudes are potentially disastrous. If they came to be accepted as the guiding principles of European policy, Europe s economy would become petrified, with stagnant growth making it impossible to afford even modest levels of social transfers.

In the 1980 s, Japan s annual GDP growth averaged 4.5 since the early 1990 s, the economy has been virtually stagnant, averaging barely 1 annual growth. In the 1990 s, Japan s government, grossly misjudging the sources of the economy s difficulties, vastly increased government expenditures on public works, but ignored supply side adjustments.

Persistently weak labor productivity growth has created a situation in which unit labor costs do not fall, even if real wages remain stagnant or decline. Indeed, despite a 1.3 drop in real wages in 2011, unit labor costs remained unchanged.

A quarter of a million more Americans are employed in business and professional services than a year ago a 1.6 annual rate of employment growth. The logic of stagnant employment is not that adding jobs to the American economy is impossible, but that demand growth is insufficient to create more jobs than are lost.

Income there stayed stagnant, as it zoomed ahead in the rest of the world.

In short, 2006 will be marked by mounting uncertainty about prospects for global economic growth, even as the distribution of the fruits of that growth remain dismally predictable. In America, at least, 2006 is likely to be another year in which stagnant real wages freeze, or even erode, the living standards of those in the middle.

For two decades, as one Asian economy after another boomed, Japan s economy remained virtually stagnant. Now, with GDP growth in Asia s two giants, China and India, slowing precipitously a decline that appears to be contributing to diminishing economic performance in much of the rest of Asia Japan is recording its strongest growth since its 1980 s boom.

Concerns have been raised about the influx of cheap labor. But average GDP growth rates in the new members are twice as high as in the original members, and this can provide a welcome stimulus to stagnant labor markets and sluggish economies.

Income growth for the middle class in most advanced countries has been stagnant, and employment opportunities have been declining, especially in the tradable part of the economy. The share of income going to capital has been rising, at the expense of labor.

The Ifo business climate indicator, which had been rising since the second half of 2005, reached its highest level since Germany s unification boom. After years of stagnant growth, the German economy has been growing at an annual rate of about 2.5 in 2006.

But it also has stagnant wages, busted banks, inadequate investment, weak productivity gains, dismal demographics, and anemic output growth. Its beggar thy neighbor economic model suppressing wages to subsidize exports should not serve as an example for the rest of the eurozone to follow.

Progressive economists argue that the weakening of unions in the US, together with tax policies favoring the rich, slowed middle class income growth, while traditional transfer programs were cut back. With incomes stagnant, households were encouraged to borrow, especially against home equity, to maintain consumption.

Because most people s incomes are stagnant and being eroded as their mortgage payments rise, consumption is bound to fall, yielding lower growth and employment. A recession will only increase job precariousness and unemployment, creating social tensions that will not, of course, help to ease the financial crisis.

On the economic front, the country is emerging from a lengthy crisis, during which its economy was stagnant.

What we found is that these rooms remained relatively stagnant until Saturday, when we opened the vents up again.

LONDON When the European Council next meets, on February 7, it should look at private investment as a means to kick start Europe s stagnant economy. With the usual drivers of GDP growth constrained across Europe, the one economic sector able to spend is the non financial corporate sector.

However, in sub Saharan Africa and Latin America poverty reduction has been stagnant, and in Western Asia poverty has actually increased.

The result is today s stagnant economy, marked by anemic growth that threatens to become the new normal. The United States and Europe are on track to have thrown away 10 of their potential wealth, while the failure to strengthen financial sector regulation has left the world economy exposed to the risk of another major crisis.

It was as if I was living in a stagnant pool and cancer dynamited the boulder that was separating me from the larger sea.

Merkel is not the first German politician to adopt a hardline stance on monetary policy and debt nor is she the first to face a torrent of international criticism. In the late 1970 s, when the world was facing a mixture of stagnant growth and inflation, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt insistently told British, French, and American leaders that their deficits were wrong and dangerous.

To be effective and properly targeted, policies need to include an accurate diagnosis of growth potential and impediments in both the tradable and non tradable parts of the economy. Focusing on one (say, the competitiveness problem in the tradable sector) to the exclusion of the other (perhaps a serious non tradable demand shortfall or stagnant absolute productivity) will not be enough.

Stagnant or falling real wages often coincided with rising unemployment and widening income gaps between skilled and unskilled labour (ILO, 2004 40 45 Akyuz et al, 2005).

Both in Africa and the Arab region, intraregional trade remained mostly stagnant for decades representing some 10 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively, of their trade volume.

Concerning the rest of Asia, steel consumption in India increased by 42 per cent from 1996 to 2004, while consumption in other developing countries of the region was stagnant.

Cameron and Osborne would then be able to boast that they have procured for the British public the best of both worlds much faster economic growth than the stagnant eurozone members, together with all of the advantages of EU membership, including access to the single market and enhanced global influence. That narrative would be far more powerful than a few tweaks to welfare rights for immigrants.

This extraordinary swing of almost 400 billion in the eurozone s current account balance did not result from a competitive devaluation the euro has remained strong. So the real reason for the eurozone s large external surplus today is that internal demand has been so weak that imports have been practically stagnant over the last five years (the average annual growth rate was a paltry 0.25 ).

But, whatever combination of events brought about his change of heart, election initiative should be welcomed. It is a necessary but insufficient first step for overhauling Egypt s stagnant political system.

The welfare state was transformed into a system of endemic waste. A gap emerged between the economy s productive base, which remained stagnant, and Greeks expectations (and demands), which were rising fast.

And it became ever clearer that economic growth doesn't automatically translate into social growth or human growth.

Well, the thesis of The Bottom Billion is that a billion people have been stuck living in economies that have been stagnant for 40 years, and hence diverging from the rest of mankind.

It was essential that the Secretary General continued to ensure that the Organization's resources were used rationally, transparently, and responsibly but there were limits to what could be achieved with a stagnant budget.