Word: bulking
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Last year, pension plans of America's 1,500 largest companies lost more than $400 billion, mainly because of the collapse of the equities market in which the bulk of those plans are invested, according to a new report from Mercer, a financial-consulting firm. Pension plans are also being hit on the other side of the balance sheet, as shrinking yields on Treasury bonds expand the scope of their pension fund liabilities. Taken together, the double dose of bad news means companies will have to pony up as much as $70 billion in pension contributions in 2009 - up from...
...many ways, the selection of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as President-elect Barack Obama's pick for surgeon general makes perfect sense. As a television personality, he has ample experience communicating with Americans about health issues in a necessarily simple way - and that is really the bulk of the job (though the Washington Post reports that Gupta has been offered a concurrent position in the new White House Office of Health Reform), though most surgeons general have been largely invisible since the days of Ronald Reagan's C. Everett Koop, who spoke out often against the dangers of smoking. Bill Clinton...
...Astrophysics on Monday at the American Astronomical Society's conference in Long Beach, Calif. Since velocity is related to mass, the 15% increase in solar-system speed translates into a near doubling of mass of the Milky Way, according to Reid's group - and all of that newfound bulk is composed of dark matter...
...China's booming trading hub of Ningbo, troubling symptoms abound. The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost of shipping raw materials, has plummeted from an all-time high of 11,793 last May to below 800, a 22-year low. The daily rental rate for the largest bulk carriers plunged from $234,000 last summer to less than $3,000 in early December, a staggering 99% reduction. "The violence of the drop is more extreme than anything we've ever seen before," says Jeremy Penn, chief executive of the London-based Baltic Exchange...
...divisive ethnic vitriol is further fueled by political calculation. Nationalism sells - as Dodik's and Silajdzic's parties learned in recent local elections, when they won the bulk of the vote in their respective constituencies. The politics of ethnocentrism props up the parties that really don't have anything else to offer the populace. The economy has been in deep trouble even before the international financial crisis. Unemployment and corruption are among highest in the region. Basic goods suffer from inflation. According to a recent study, about 70% of Bosnians below the age of 30 have abandoned hope...