Word: bettering
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Instead, the auto manufacturers, especially The Big Three, are showing up with paper and Styrofoam versions of their future models which will sit on linoleum floors. The most extravagant attractions, which were often better than the cars, will be completely absent. As The Wall Street Journal points out, "Chrysler LLC has eliminated its popular test track in the basement of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, for which it once trucked in tons of dirt, rocks and logs and where attendees could go for a short spin in a Jeep. " (See pictures of the Top 10 scared traders...
After a period of a few weeks in which investors and analysts felt a little better about the prospects of the economy at the end of the year, the pallbearers have returned. The enthusiasm about a recovery in the banking system was sandwiched by bad news from bank analysts who think the largest financial firms will have to raise tens of billions of extra dollars on the one side and Congressmen who say that they will not provide more TARP money on the other. With insurance companies now begging for dollars as well, there is not going to be enough...
Banking problems were at the front of the gauntlet of bad news. The rise in prime mortgage defaults dampened the hopes that the housing market was in the midst of a comeback and the first few companies that have announced earnings have done no better than their gloomy forecasts said that they would. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) lost its Triple-A rating as GE (GE) did just a few weeks ago. The period of the Fort Knox balance sheet is over in America. As of the Berkshire news, all corporate debt officially carries risk...
...proposed by the White House in February and projections issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in March, Social Security benefits ($659 billion, according to the CBO) will exceed payroll taxes ($653 billion) in fiscal 2009 for the first time since 1984. Payroll-tax receipts generally hold up much better in recessions than do income taxes, but job losses have been so severe that the CBO expects them to decline slightly from 2008, while benefits rise almost 9% because of cost-of-living adjustments and the beginnings of the baby-boomer retirement wave. (See five reasons for economic optimism...
...better reason for the lack of attention paid to the disappearance of Social Security's surplus may be that it's starting to seem like small change. My earlier worry about 2017 was that the country was going to have to find a way - through raising taxes or cutting spending - to make up for the $100 billion or so that Social Security had been handing over to the rest of the Federal Government annually. Now, with a budget deficit projected at $1.8 trillion this year, we've got far bigger fiscal issues to worry about...