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Faster Recovery. Many economists wonder just how robust the recovery can be if unemployment hovers around 8% well into 1976, as President Ford's budget projects. David Grove, IBM's vice president-economist, foresees a "slow recovery"so slow, in fact, that it will take until late 1976 for production to return to where it was in late 1973. But forces will be at work that could make the recovery move faster. Argus Research Corp., an economic-consulting firm, estimates that for each one-point decline in the rate of inflation, consumers get $10 billion in added purchasing power on an annual basis. By that reckoning, American consumers will have the equivalent of an extra $70 billion to $80 billion to fuel the recovery during the rest of this year, if inflation goes down to 6% or less and holds there, as a few economists predict, and taxes are reduced by more than $20 billion. Says Murray Weidenbaum: "It now seems probable that the worst may be over. The odds are that 1975, the year that began on such a pessimistic downbeat, will end on an optimistic upbeat."
