Word: barbera
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While Sesame Street inspired a new approach to children's programming, other formats were faltering. Sitcoms like Gilligan's Island began to push out locally produced kids' shows, while animation studios like Hanna-Barbera offered their own distractions. In 1990 the Children's Television Act required that all stations air at least three hours of educational programming a week, prompting a brainteasing revolution. Preschool kids now learn problem-solving from Blue's Clues, teamwork from Wonder Pets! and Mandarin from Ni Hao, Kai-lan. Good thing they already know how to get to Sesame Street...
Some claim the act of knuckle-bumping began in the 1970s with NBA players like Baltimore Bullets guard Fred Carter. Others claim the fist bump's national debut occurred off the court, citing the Wonder Twins, minor characters in the 1970s Hanna-Barbera superhero cartoon The Superfriends, who famously touched knuckles and cried "Wonder Twin powers, activate!' before morphing into animals or ice sculptures. One might also credit germaphobics for the fist bump's popularity. Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel reportedly adopted the gesture as a friendly way to avoid his contestants' germs...
...Spirou to give them their own series in 1959, and over the years Peyo published 16 albums, and developed an animated movie in 1975 that featured music by Oscar-winning French songwriter Michel Legrand. However, the Smurfs did not emerge as global icons until the advent of the Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon in 1981. The Emmy-winning series (it won for Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series in 1982-1983) ran for eight seasons on NBC, producing 272 half-hour episodes and earning a 42% share of the U.S. Saturday morning audience...
Forward to 2007. "Now the world is booming, credit demand in Asia is rising, and you don't need the U.S. consumer to be the spender of last resort," says Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at the brokerage firm ITG. The world economy is in its fifth year of nearly 5% growth. But the U.S. is no longer leading. Foreign financial markets are booming and pulling in money. Rising commodity prices are complicating the Fed's inflation-fighting job. As a result, the U.S. consumer can no longer count on a steady flow of low-interest debt...
...global benevolent despot, you'd say this is all to the good," Barbera notes. But if you are stuck with an ARM that's about to reset or have been relying on home-equity loans to make ends meet, you may be in trouble. And if you work for a business like Home Depot that depends on consumer spending, you may be in trouble...