Word: excessive
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...financial threat now looming over so many elderly Americans had its roots largely in the tumultuous restructuring that jostled corporate America during the 1980s. In many cases corporations scrambling for cash shut down their pension plans and pocketed the so-called excess funds. Some clearly acted irresponsibly, imperiling the future security of aging members of the corporate family for quick financial gain. Others terminated the plans as a defensive measure against hostile takeovers, knowing that the buyout buzzards circling overhead saw the cash from their well-stocked pensioners' funds as a tempting target and were eager to pick them clean...
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...
Sadly, however, undergraduate education at Harvard seems to be a case of the fish rotting from the tail up. Administrators can divert money and attention toward the College, but the root of the problem lies in the departmental bureaucracy. To put it simply, Harvard is plagued by an excess of "teachers" who simply do not want to have to teach...
What's wrong with housing the excess books in the basement of Weld? How about the unoccupied Pizzeria Regina building? Maybe the spacious Pi Eta club would open its doors to some of the Widener overflow, perhaps even to books written by women...
...government agencies in attempts to block their investigations. In recent years hundreds of longtime Scientology adherents - many charging that they were mentally or physically abused - have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500,000. In various cases judges have labeled the church "schizophrenic and paranoid" and "corrupt, sinister and dangerous." (See "Scientology Trial in France: Can a Religion Be Banned...