Word: boom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...patio of Fiesta Villa on Main Avenue and watch the railroad cars packed with coal go by - and by and by - and you'll start to understand why. Last year was a great one for energy and agriculture: corn, crude oil, coal and wheat are major state exports. The boom helped push energy outfit MDU Resources onto the Fortune 500 (the first North Dakota firm to make the list) and the state budget to a $1.2 billion surplus. State workers around the country are being told to sit at home without pay to trim costs; in North Dakota they...
...Back in Hong Kong, Chinese thenardite producer Lumena Resources (thenardite is a key ingredient in powder detergents, textiles, glass, chemical feedstock and pharmaceuticals) rang up 19% in gains on June 17. On June 22, the IPO of China Metal Recycling closed 22% higher. (See pictures of China's infrastructure boom...
...wing ally President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, is a combative populist who critics say is too dismissive of the legislative and judicial branches, which are still weak institutions in Latin America. Her Sunday setback "indicates that Latin America's hyperpresidentialist project, which was fueled by the economic boom, faces walls and obstacles now," says Javier Corrales, a Latin America expert who teaches political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Another factor is the exit of U.S. President George W. Bush, whose own bid for excessive presidential power wasn't exactly seen by Latin Americans as a model...
...long boom in stock prices from 1982 to 2000 and the shorter one in housing prices from about 1997 to 2006 were fueled by rising debt. Ever easier mortgage terms and falling interest rates provided a brisk tailwind for home prices. In the stock market, higher profits pushed along by bigger consumer and corporate debt loads brought higher stock prices. Start ratcheting the indebtedness down and throw in slower growth, and both of these processes go backward. For the long-term health of the economy, that's good--as we've learned, debt-fueled growth is not indefinitely sustainable...
That won't be easy to change. The 1990s managed-care boom was supposed to incentivize HMOs to keep us healthy, but it slashed needed as well as unneeded care in a frenzy of willy-nilly cost-cutting and short-term profit-taking, triggering a national backlash. And if Congress gets into the details of what would be reimbursed under a new fee-for-quality structure, the same interest-group politics that have distorted and ultimately paralyzed the current system could dominate the new system; that's why Obama has proposed to depoliticize those decisions through an independent agency similar...