Word: fiascos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Attentive John le Carre fans may recognize the narrator of the author's 13th novel. He is Ned (no last name given), the British intelligence official who ran the operation so vividly bungled in the best-selling The Russia House (1989). That fiasco was not Ned's fault, to be sure, but he has been punished by his Service superiors anyhow, unplugged from the power loop and farmed out to teach spycraft to young recruits. On an inspired whim, Ned manages to lure his old mentor, George Smiley, out of retirement to spend an evening talking with these students...
...debt-laden companies into massive loan defaults. Collapsing banks would aggravate the downward spiral by drying up credit and leaving taxpayers with another painful bailout bill. The disaster scenario may be plausible, but most experts doubt that bank failures will come close to the magnitude of the S&L fiasco, which will cost Americans as much as $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Despite the banking industry's problems, 89% of U.S. commercial banks were profitable in last year's third quarter. The S&L industry, by contrast, lost $1.5 billion during the period...
This conflict has had its own share of administrative fiasco, with the U.S. supporting Saddam Hussein until just before his invasion of Kuwait. But that's nothing compared to the near-absolute suppression of democratic principles supervised by the U.S. in Vietnam...
...said a senior Administration official, "the worst week of his presidency." The outpouring of criticism reflected long-held doubts about Bush's approach to domestic affairs. G.O.P. strategists complained that the President's flip-flops had weakened the widespread perception that Congress is more responsible for the budget fiasco than the White House. Complained a top adviser to the President: "We've managed to change the subject from 'Can the Congress pass a budget?' to 'Why isn't the President leading...
Later is now. And as the budget debacle in Washington demonstrated, Darman still has found no way to repair the fiscal fiasco that he, as much as anyone else, helped create. Last week, after more than five months of closed-door negotiations, he watched as timorous rank-and-file House members defeated a painfully crafted deficit-cutting deal worth $500 billion over five years. For once, Darman's goals had been economically laudatory, even politically reasonable. He had wanted to solve the deficit problem by shifting the government onto a healthier diet of lower borrowing. He had envisioned...