Word: cards
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...believed to have issued the world's first paper currency around 600 A.D., and fourteen centuries later, cash remains king. Cars and houses are bought, and even salaries are often paid, with thick envelopes of bills. To date, banks have issued only slightly more than 50 million credit cards to a population of 1.3 billion, according to a recent study done by the payment processing company First Data International. Credit card debt remains minimal - 85% of cardholders pay the full balance off each month. By comparison, Americans possess 640 million cards - more than double the population - with the average card...
...Chinese government doesn't entirely disagree. At the urging of the U.S., the country has undertaken vast reforms of its banking sector over the past five years, including opening up the system to foreign banks offering debit cards. But officials remain cautious about letting consumer debt grow too fast, and have maintained safeguards such as low credit limits. Wang Huaqing, assistant chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, recently told the Washington Post that such decisions come from reports of people taking out loans to speculate in the stock market or on real estate, adding the indebtedness of young Americans...
Everything China produces, with the possible exception of textiles, is pure junk. All those "goodwill gifts" offered by U.S. credit-card companies are completely worthless. TIME sent me a made-in-China radio set as an award for being on time with my subscription renewal. The radio lasted all of one hour--a screeching box that ended up on the junk pile. Americans are buying substandard products and sustaining China's economy. Future generations will condemn us for this...
Just as much a wild card, however, are Floridians themselves. They are environmentally conscious on issues like Everglades preservation and offshore oil drilling. Even Crist's conservative predecessor, Jeb Bush, the President's younger brother, championed the former and opposed the latter. Still, the car is king in Florida to a greater degree than it is even in California; and the peninsula is scattered with dead initiatives to curb its use, especially local tax efforts to improve the state's virtually nonexistent public transportation. But Crist, whose optimism is as bright as his tan, isn't worried. "Floridians love their...
...Stephen Hess, a former White House staffer and current scholar at The Brookings Institute, has seen the executive privilege card played a few times - with former Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton - but it usually is resolved by some sort of compromise before it reaches the courts. That might not happen this time. "There's less of a chance of this being settled out of court, both because of what's involved and even because of the psychological stakes on both sides. I don't see anybody who wants to settle out of court, which is too bad because every...