Word: demanding
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...higher yields of BABs have made muni bonds more attractive to pension funds and other nonprofit (i.e., tax-free) investors. And that new demand is driving down the yields on traditional muni bonds because there are relatively fewer of them issued. BABs, unlike traditional munis, are taxable. For most individual investors, the interest-rate difference is a wash - a high net worth investor would owe the extra yield they get from the BAB back in taxes, so they'd wind up with roughly the same after-tax yield as if they had bought a lower-yielding tax-free muni...
...Brennan, an office-furniture store owner in the Philadelphia area, couldn't believe how quickly and ferociously the recession hit his business. Demand for office furniture had surged to new highs in 2008, causing him to frantically add staff to meet furniture orders and allowing him to wrap up the year with revenue surpassing the $24 million mark - the highest level since his company's launch in 1989. But all of that came to an abrupt halt in January 2009 when the recession forced companies to postpone or cancel office expansions and renovations, causing demand for Brennan's office furniture...
...housing turmoil and the weak dollar have weighed heavily on small business as demand for building contractors, which are often smaller businesses, dried up in the housing bust, and the cost of importing raw materials like copper for contracting work has risen due to the weak U.S. dollar. Large companies with overseas operations have an easier time hedging against those risks...
There's not much to add to the first point - that really bad stuff can happen - other than to note that capitalism has just experienced the equivalent of a meteor near miss. But the second and third points demand more explanation. The reason a big federal debt undermines the dollar is that a government with really big debts will be tempted to inflate its way out by printing money to pay creditors. Printing more dollars (the process actually involves the Federal Reserve's purchasing government securities with dollars it conjures out of thin air) reduces the value of existing dollars...
...idea of Sullenberger being a hero ... Please. I think we're "heroed out" right now in the United States. Hero is a term that is almost always misapplied in modern America. I don't know if there's a genuine demand in the public [for heroes], or if it's a creation of headline writers and television people...