Word: direness
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...After an initial period of shock, complete paralysis gripped policymakers-and for an agonizingly long period the economy contracted. The initial policy reflex to raise interest rates, curb investment and dampen consumption rendered a dire situation worse, just as similar Hooverite measures had once done in the U.S. In the late 1990s, with social and political upheaval at hand, Japan was finally jolted into action. To quell a threatening run on the banks, the government declared that it would guarantee every deposit in the country, and injected trillions of yen into the financial system. Still the economy failed to respond...
...talk about a real estate bubble just a lot of hot air? For all the dire warnings that a pop may well be on its way, 2005 proved to be another record year for the housing market. Home prices rose 13% last year, according to a report released last week by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). What's more, last year's gains cap a five-year run-up in which home prices have soared...
...even produced too many places. Also a problem are duplicate applications, caused when panicked parents join several different waiting lists. To reduce confusion, some councils in Sydney share centrally compiled lists of applicants; a similar scheme will soon be tried in Victoria. But where shortages exist, they're often dire, particularly for babies and toddlers, who need more intensive - and expensive - care than older children. In the Melbourne bayside municipality of Port Phillip, 1,935 children are on the waiting list for care, says Rebecca Bartel, co-covenor of Childcare Access in Port Phillip, a voluble parents' campaign to highlight...
...Insisting that "the human rights situation in [Iraq] remains dire," Amnesty's report also says that as of last November over 14,000 prisoners considered security threats - and rounded up primarily by U.S. forces - were being held at Abu Ghraib, three other U.S. detention centers and a number of smaller temporary internment camps in Iraq. "The vast majority" of these detainees, Amnesty claims, have never been tried or charged and have no way to challenge their imprisonment in court...
...Such dire predictions have been made before and proved wrong. But this time Iraq got a very real, very frightening glimpse of what war with itself might look like. After three days of violence, more than 200 people were killed, and Sunni groups claimed at least 100 mosques were damaged. The extent of the carnage left many with the uneasy sense that the long-simmering hostility between the country's two main sects has at last boiled over--and that the fragile, feckless institutions of authority in Iraq have no means of holding the anger back. "This was the worst...