disinflationary

"I think we're still very much in a disinflationary globe," he said.

Indeed, "a disinflationary environment will exist around the world for the first half of the decade."

Nonetheless, today's figures confirmed that disinflationary pressure in the economy is building.

He doubted they could sustain earnings growth in a disinflationary climate.

From 1982 to 1986 the economy was in a period of disinflationary growth with low interest rates, an ideal climate for financial assets, he said.

"Over time, not even Hussein can repeal the laws of supply and demand in a disinflationary environment."

Poland's disinflationary efforts, moreover, coincided with a very high real exchange rate.

This reduction in consumption will inevitably have a deflationary or disinflationary effect.

We've moved to a disinflationary environment in which business is shifting production to lower-cost labor pools.

"Consumers have developed a disinflationary mind-set, and they have come to expect more for less."

"Faster productivity growth," he said, "would be an important source of disinflationary pressure, pushing bond yields lower."

Everything from modern art to antique cars to ancient coins has crashed, and these disinflationary times favor no recovery.

Others argue that disinflationary forces are currently so strong that such pressures pose no threat.

At the same time, Mr. Meyer said, the surge in productivity growth had a disinflationary effect.

"The 1980's were a disinflationary period, so I focused on companies with strong brand names, especially consumer packaged-food businesses."

Utility issues were stock market favorites in the last few years because they benefitted from a disinflationary economic environment and declining interest rates.

Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker very sharply increased interest rates from 1979-1983 in what was called a "disinflationary scenario."

The primary driver of sector rotation is the variability of currency values (inflationary, disinflationary, or deflationary) and interest rates.

"In a disinflationary world, small companies can't compete as easily with big companies," Mr. Paulsen said.

"Companies may be competitive enough this time around so that a dose of weakness in the economy might have a bigger disinflationary impact than has been true historically," he said.

"Today's figures confirm that disinflationary pressure in the economy is building," Samuel Tombs, a UK economist at Capital Economics, said.

"Free trade and open borders for money and goods are a tremendously disinflationary force, and anything that disrupts that will raise questions about the larger effort," he said.

She said producer prices were "showing a disinflationary trend," industrial material prices "have been soft," and corn, soybean and precious metal prices had moved down again.

"The forces that have emerged out of the Southeast Asian difficulties are imparting a disinflationary effect on the United States and others," Mr. Greenspan said.

Within the last three weeks, stocks that do well in a disinflationary environment have generally outperformed the cyclical groups that fared so well in this year's first quarter.