Word: booms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Many of the forces that initially sent the economy into a tailspin in 1929 and 1930 have been at work in the 2000s as well: a stock-market boom turned bust, a real estate boom turned bust, unprecedented levels of consumer debt. The reason they haven't metastasized 1930s-style is that this time around, the Federal Reserve has acted forcefully, whereas in 1930 it was a spectator at the national train wreck...
...that, for less than $600, lets partners seal an uncontested divorce via the Internet. "We facilitate about 100 divorces a month," he says. "But we're not promoting divorce, just making it more accessible." Like him, sociologist Inés Alberdi sees little grounds for concern over the divorce boom. "The number of divorces may have climbed, but the number of separations has decreased by almost the same amount," she says. "Before, when it came to divorce, Spain had very strange practices. Now we're more like other countries in Europe...
...more than $150 billion. Clearly there aren't enough Liechtensteiners to pile up that much cash. No wonder the principality has always rebuffed Berlin's demands for the names of German citizens with accounts there. Without the protection offered by its banking-secrecy provisions, Liechtenstein's financial-services boom would quickly die. Hans-Martin Uehlinger, a spokesman for LGT Group, is uttering Liechtenstein gospel when he says, "Paying taxes is the responsibility of the customer, not the bank...
...lowest fertility rate in Europe. The rate has actually started to inch back upward, from a low of 1.16 live births per woman in 1996 to 1.38 in 2006. That minor uptick is linked to larger immigrant families, but also to children of Spain's early-1970s baby boom starting to have kids of their own. It's not enough, though, to maintain the population level, so Parliament last year approved a $3,700 "baby bonus" subsidy for each child born...
...though in reality the husband often moves back in with his parents, or two divorcés join each other in a single household. Moreover, young people in Spain tend to live with their parents until they're married, a result of an affordable-housing shortage amid the housing boom. It proved untrue, says García-Montalvo, "that smaller families automatically mean more houses...