Word: ago
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such problems have plunged most firms into the financial doldrums. Merrill Lynch, the largest U.S. brokerage, reported last week that its first-quarter profits tumbled to $37.2 million, down 46% from a year ago. Paine Webber Group said its earnings dropped 56%, while Dean Witter's income was off nearly 40%. Shearson Lehman Hutton suffered a particularly harsh blow. After writing down its holdings in MCorp, a troubled Texas banking firm, Shearson reported a $15 million loss for the quarter. Overall, the before-tax income of U.S. securities firms slumped to $450 million, down 60% from the first quarter...
...most of the repossessed property and will be combined with the FDIC under the Bush plan, has seldom shown a talent for getting top dollar. In Guerneville, Calif., a small town north of San Francisco, the FSLIC took over a condominium project with more than 20 units two years ago. The original owners had been trying to sell the units a few years earlier for an average of $140,000 each, though market conditions suggested that a price of $75,000 was more appropriate. When the FSLIC took over, it sold all the condos for about $27,000 apiece...
...ever an American artist had seemed dead and buried a decade ago, along ! with the movement he had led, that man was surely Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975). True, his huge murals writhing with buckskinned, blue-jeaned and gingham-clad Americans were still to be seen in situ in the Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City, and the Truman Library, Independence, Mo.; his name might still be invoked in Kansas City, where his latter years were spent; and most students of American art history knew that he had been the teacher (and to no small extent, the substitute father) of Jackson...
...asteroid hitting the earth at a speed of nearly 50,000 m.p.h. could dig a crater a mile or so across and several hundred feet deep -- similar in size to a gaping hole in the Arizona earth, known as Meteor Crater, that was blasted out some 40,000 years ago. Such an impact today would be enough to wipe out a major population center...
...that hit every 10 million to 100 million years. The half- milers are bad enough, but these giant ones pose a threat to the entire planet. It was such an asteroid (or an equivalent-size comet) that many scientists believe caused the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. The primary evidence, discovered by the late physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter, a geologist, is a layer of the element iridium laid down in sedimentary rock at about the time the giant reptiles disappeared. Iridium is rare on the earth's surface but more common in asteroids...