Word: cushion
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...more government bonds, which can drive up interest rates and lead to inflation. Deficits also make it harder for a financially strapped government to deal with unexpected disasters. In fact, the last U.S. budget surplus occurred in 2001, when Washington was able to use fiscal and monetary policies to cushion the fallout following 9/11 and keep the economy from tumbling into a recession...
...Desk chair or seat cushion: Harvard outfits its dorms with unsightly, back-breaking chairs. Avoid them and study in your room pain-free...
...engage in litigation in order to see his vision through or lay siege to his competitors. Sometimes his aggressive moves pay off (as in British pay cable operator BskyB) and sometimes they don't (as in TV Guide). Plus, with his cable operations showing robust growth, he has a cushion that few of his newspaper competitors possess...
...while being big is still an advantage - size offers a better survival cushion if food proves hard to find - there are other factors that limit how easily that trait is passed down. Coulson and his colleagues identified what they call the "young mum" factor. Sheep, unlike many other mammals, tend to have offspring quite early in life - mothers can have lambs at one-year-old, before they're fully grown. Since the size of the lambs is limited by the size of the mothers, younger mothers have smaller babies. Thanks to the milder winters, more sheep are able to survive...
...unpleasant earnings news could persist past the end of the year. Bank examiners in the recent government stress tests estimated that Wells Fargo will have as much as $86 billion in loans that go unpaid over the next two years. The bank has already put aside some money to cushion that blow - $22 billion as of the end of March - and Wells would be able to tap another $24 billion of loss provision that it set up when it acquired Wachovia. But that still leaves another $40 billion in loan losses that could find their way to Wells' bottom line...