Word: excessions
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When his wealthy Italian mistress dies, the amoral historian Max Mather inherits first choice from among her trove of paintings. Rummaging around, he finds two panels of aged wood. On them are portraits that have never been cataloged, both by Raphael, and each is worth in excess of $50 million. The Italian government may seize such rare items as national treasures, so Max works a scheme to spirit them out of the country. But this is only the beginning of Masterclass (St. Martin's Press; 330 pages; $19.95). Author Morris West (The Shoes of the Fisherman, The Clowns...
...Franklin wrote to Josiah Quincy in 1773, expressing a simple truth that helps explain why Americans cheer so loudly as the victorious soldiers march through the center of town, leaving behind a trail of limp ticker tape, burst balloons -- and grumbling pundits. Some people will carp at the giddy excess and point out that the U.S. is cheering while the gulf still burns. They may be overlooking something that has changed in the way Americans think about themselves and what their country has achieved by war. It is at least possible that the great postwar party now in progress...
...group of academic libertarians," Wilson says. "It has both liberal and conservative thinkers. The group argues for the libertarian view against excess...
Stanford presented the Office of Naval Research (ONR), its regulatory agency for research, with a check worth in excess of $900,000 at a Congressional hearing last month, but the check was rejected because Stanford attached conditions that the ONR could not accept. Federal investigators for the subcommittee have said that Stanford overcharged taxpayers nearly $200 million over the last decade...
Similarly, when corporate raider Ronald Perelman seized Revlon in 1985, First Executive helped finance the $2.7 billion takeover, buying $370 million worth of Drexel's junk bonds. Perelman shut down Revlon's pension plan and skimmed off at least $50 million in "excess funding." He then rolled existing pension obligations into Executive Life annuities. Says Eli Schefer, a retired Revlon engineer in Sands Point, N.Y.: "Those were cozy deals, not done according to fiduciary standards. These guys should be thrown in jail. Now that I am almost 72, I've got to worry about when my next pension check...