Word: booming
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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...
Because the world economy is so strong, times are still good for business in general. Recent jitters in the riskier parts of the bond and loan markets may slow the private-equity boom (private-equity firms use borrowed money to purchase the likes of Chrysler and Hilton) but don't necessarily presage a crash. The Federal Government, which gets an ever higher percentage of its revenue from the minority of taxpayers who are profiting from the global boom, is making out O.K. as well. But the era of easy money, when ordinary Americans could count on borrowing their...
...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...