Word: aaas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...domestic expenses, the Government was forced last week to lift its 91-day bill yield to an alltime high 4.673%. President Johnson also instructed Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler to boost the interest rates on U.S. Savings Bonds, probably from 3¾% to 4¼%. Meanwhile, some AAA corporate bonds now yield close to 5%, and banks have begun to pay up to 5½% for time deposits...
Borgmann provides an amusing section on rhopalic sentences in which each word has one letter more than the last ("I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting"), and some helpful hints for the Scrabble set (aaa is a hookworm disease of ancient Egypt, and the zzxjoanw is a musical instrument). Unfortunately, he omits acrostics, telestichs, lipogrammata, univocalic verses, Richelieu's equivoque or Swift's "Lacerated Latin" verses, in which Latin words make English statements ("Omi de armis tres,/ Imi na dis tres./ Cantu disco ver/ Meas alo ver?"). But he does include a section...
...record of $10.3 billion in bonds will be offered this year -a high bond rating becomes all-important. Last week, for example, when the state of California offered the largest tax-exempt issue floated this year, for $150 million worth of school and general construction bonds, its AAA rating quickly attracted all the lenders it needed...
After every detail is weighed, the committee hands down its decision in a terse alphabetical shorthand. At Moody's, which pioneered the rating system back in 1909, the four top grades are Aaa, Aa, A and Baa, ranging from prime quality to faintly speculative. Standard & Poor's goes in for the upper case: AAA, AA, A and BBB. Dun & Bradstreet, which also owns Moody's but makes its own independent assessments, spells out its scale: prime, better good, good, medium good...
...bond houses inspect the same figures and usually arrive at comparable ratings, Moody's has the reputation of being more conservative, while Standard & Poor's gives greater consideration to future prospects. Last October, for example, Moody's bumped New York State from its prime rating of Aaa to a high-quality rating of Aa because of its concern over the state's need to find new sources of tax revenue. Standard & Poor's stuck by its AAA rating, and so did the bond market, which snapped up the New York bonds without hesitation. Deep...