Word: boom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Until recently, nests were mainly harvested from caves in the wild, and the trade was dominated by a ruthless and well-connected élite. Now, fueled by insatiable demand from prospering China, a regional boom in farming nests in purpose-built birdhouses - "swiftlet condos," as they're sometimes called - is democratizing the business. "It's recession-proof," enthuses Harry Kok, a retired Malaysian engineer who owns or has shares in five birdhouses and writes a blog on the subject from his Kuala Lumpur home. "The overheads are minimal. You don't have a factory with so many workers. Right...
Thwarted ambition is not the only problem. One of the dirty little secrets of Spain's boom years was the number of people Spanish firms employed on casual contracts. In an effort to make its labor market more flexible, the country has the highest rate of temporary jobs in the European Union: one in three. The great majority of those "trash contracts," as they're called by locals, go to the young, making them the easiest (read: least expensive) workers to fire. None of this is new. Young people have complained of being mileuristas since Europe adopted the common currency...
...South China Sea. The alternative is a bumpy Land Rover ride from Bintulu, a coastal oil town three hours away, much of it on a rutted logging road past denuded ocher hills cleared to make way for palm-oil plantations. These have driven the area's economic boom, but also fuelled its cultural decline. (See pictures of Hong Kong...
...While new types of lending programs are slowly expanding credit to SMEs, things could get worse later this year. The overall boom in bank lending has increased the risk of bad loans that could come back to haunt the financial system and delay economic recovery. Some economists now say that policymakers will want to control credit more tightly in the second half of the year. Their challenge will be to ensure that small businesses that have seen little help thus far don't get further squeezed as the credit explosion is reined...
...pictures of China's infrastructure boom...