Word: boom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That something is the close of a remarkable era of easy money. Cheap credit helped fuel the stock bubble at the end of the past millennium and almost entirely fueled the real estate boom of the first years of this millennium. It kept us spending through the tough years that followed the stock market's collapse, and it allowed the Bush Administration to finance big budget deficits without strain. Easy money also helped enable the rise of private equity as a major economic force...
...inflation was so low it might turn into deflation. So it cut short-term rates even further, reducing them to 1% in 2003, while the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond--a key benchmark of long-term rates--dropped as low as 3.13%. The result: a real estate boom, as ultra-low mortgage rates made houses affordable at ever higher prices. Cash from refinancings and home-equity loans also kept consumer spending strong. By mid-2004, confident that deflation was out of the picture, the Fed began raising rates again. But the longer-term interest rates, the ones controlled...
...months after Grease: a stupendous flop, Moment by Moment ($11 million). He had endured the first big up-down in a notably seismic career. Urban Cowboy boom, Two of a Kind bust; Staying Alive a zig, Perfect a zag. The sassy-baby Look Who's Talking was his top grosser since Grease; then he had another recession until Pulp Fiction pegged him as the cool bad guy and won him a string of hits. Another soft phase set in until this year's comedy smash Wild Hogs...
...Last week, in Delhi, I set out to test attitudes to a young, single woman seeking accommodation. In the main market of the middle class neighborhood of Dwarka, half a dozen property agents line a busy street, eager to cash in on the property boom that has gripped the capital. The first agent I tried seemed hesitant to speak to me, and explained that it would be "difficult" to rent a house to a single woman. He listed a series of apartment complexes that maintained unofficial policies allowing them to lease "only to families." Owners don't like the parties...
...buoyancy of China's equity markets. The relentless increase in stock prices in both Shanghai and Shenzhen-the former market has trebled in value in just the past 18 months-has triggered a stampede of Chinese companies eager to offer shares to a ravenous public. But is the IPO boom a historic milestone marking the permanent shift of China's financial center of gravity from Hong Kong to the mainland? Or is it a temporary aberration that, for investors, will come to a tragic and costly...