Word: default
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Beame and his aides defend their figures and pledge alternative trims if necessary. But if the skeptics are correct, the city could face a new default threat next winter and an end to the federal loans that have kept the city solvent since January...
...remote and primitive Portuguese fiefdom of East Timor in the Lesser Sunda islands may have been the closest thing ever to a colony that no one really wanted. Discovered by the Portuguese in the 16th century, it has been theirs by default ever since. A mountainous wilderness roughly half the size of Maryland, East Timor has 650,000 inhabitants, mainly illiterate natives. Colonial mastery, such as it was, lay in the hands of an appointed governor, several hundred Portuguese militiamen, and a handful of coffee planters...
...millions of ready-cut spuds to McDonald's, which turns them into millions of French fries to go with its quick-food goodies. But Simplot has a reputation as a wheeler-dealer in his favorite commodity, and last week he found himself entangled in the biggest potato-futures default in the 104 years of the New York Mercantile Exchange...
Even by the standards of the often rowdy commodities market, the potato bust was bizarre. It resulted in 50 million Ibs. of potatoes, worth $4.2 million, not being delivered on schedule, sending almost 1,000 potato-futures contracts into default. That in turn promised to touch off scores of lawsuits and an investigation by Government regulators...
Simplot will not say how many of those defaulted contracts were his; he claims not to keep close track of numbers. But he and a fellow potato titan, P.J. Taggeras of Othello, Wash., are believed to own all of them. The Mercantile Exchange has already begun moving against the clearinghouses used by the spudmen. Exchange President Richard Levine said the houses would be liable for the cost of the potatoes and required to pay fines for not abiding by the default rules of the exchange. Presumably, the firms will try to get the money from their defaulting clients...