Future Remains Guarded Analysts said the outlook for future earnings in the auto industry was guarded because of a gradual slowdown in car sales.

The report did not cause much alarm among industry experts, who said housing activity was experiencing a gradual slowdown but remained at a healthy level.

That set the stage for a six-year economic boom with low inflation, the first successful "soft landing," the gradual slowdown that many economists had thought was impossible to orchestrate.

"Our small member companies expect a gradual slowdown in investment and slow gains across the board in 1996," the association's president, Jerry Jasinowski, said, referring to the group's annual survey of manufacturing executives.

The Fed tightened gradually, and we have had this gradual slowdown.'

They see a gradual slowdown ahead because they believe stock prices will stop rising this year, and interest rates might edge up a bit.

It was not a gradual slowdown: At 4 P.M. the day before Thanksgiving, the entire staff was dismissed with a week's severance pay.

According to this myth, official projections, which point to a gradual slowdown in economic growth, are too pessimistic.

"All this led to the gradual slowdown and braking of the economy and in time led to the changes we call perestroika."

With 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages offered by most area lenders inching back up to the 9 percent level, a gradual slowdown in applications is expected.