In his chapter on Afghanistan, which he calls a "narco-state," Risen shows how Rumsfeld disdained the task of nation-building there, and how he tolerated the astronomical rise of opium production after the fall of the Taliban.
Final tidbit: At one point, the Saudis asked Jordanian intelligence to review their counterterrorism efforts, and so the Jordanians toured Saudi military and security facilities, Risen writes.
Risen portrays them as consummate bureaucratic infighters, who make Machiavelli look like a piker.
Retail sales have
risen sharply over recent months after a pause during the spring.
Household wealth has been boosted substantially by the run-up in stock prices over the past year and a half, but for many households, debt burdens have risen significantly in recent years and may represent a constraint on purchases of big-ticket items.
The increases in activity have been facilitated by generally supportive financial conditions: Although long-term interest rates have risen considerably on net since early 1996, intermediaries have continued to supply credit to most borrowers on favorable terms, and interest rate spreads on corporate securities over Treasury securities have remained narrow.
After a lackluster performance in 1995, real outlays for nondurable goods have also risen this year; the average level of these expenditures in April and May was nearly 3 percent at an annual rate above that recorded in the fourth quarter.
So far in 1989, the value of oil imports has risen sharply, as higher prices for petroleum and petroleum products were accompanied by a small increase in physical volume.
Inventory buildups by manufacturers have been concentrated in the aircraft and other capital goods industries, where production has risen and order backlogs are large.
Spending for the space program and for tax and immigration enforcement also has risen.
Over the eight years that preceded 1988, real federal purchases, other than those of the CCC, had risen at an average pace of nearly 5 percent, considerably faster than the growth of real GNP.
Spending for construction, which had risen rapidly in the mid-1980s, was little changed during 1988 as a whole, although some pickup was evident in the fourth quarter.
