Like a truck that suddenly hits an icy patch of road, the U.S. economic recovery that had been picking up speed for weeks has begun to skid. The bitter cold and unrelenting snows that have gripped the U.S. east of the Rockies are throwing onto unemployment rolls hundreds of thousands of workers, ranging from coal miners in Appalachia to oystermen who cannot chop through the ice in Chesapeake Bay. Soaring prices for fruit and vegetable crops damaged by the freeze are giving a new push to inflation. Worse, even if the weather should warm up suddenly, which hardly seems likely, many...
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