Word: firming
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...time of nearly universal dismay over the business outlook, there are few experts anywhere who can out-gloom Jim Walker, an economist at an independent Hong Kong research firm called Asianomics. In his thick Scottish accent, Walker predicts the worst global recession since the Great Depression. GDP in the U.S., he says, could contract as much as 5% in 2009, and Europe by 2%. He is no more bullish about the economies in his area of specialty: Asia, a region where most of his colleagues foresee more buoyancy. China won't see GDP rise more than...
...ethics policy. Another issue stems from the people nominated to the Administration who have worked in the lobbying business but are not technically lobbyists - people, in other words, like Daschle or former Senator George Mitchell, the new Middle East peace envoy who previously served as chairman of a law firm that has done lobbying and legal work for many clients in the region, including the leader of Dubai...
Daschle, for instance, was a high-paid "policy adviser" at Alston & Bird, a lobbying firm with dozens of brand-name pharmaceutical and health-services clients. "Senator Daschle focuses his services on advising the firm's clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy," boasts the firm's website. One of Alston's clients, EduCap, a nonprofit student-loan company that spent six figures lobbying to change federal loan laws, took Daschle on two cushy overseas trips, one to the Bahamas for a board meeting and another to the Middle East to meet with foreign leaders...
...Lords-for-hire allegations came after journalists, posing as lobbyists representing a fictional Asian firm that was setting up a chain of shops in the U.K., approached 10 Lords for help amending business-rates legislation. Three Conservative peers, a Liberal Democrat, an Ulster Unionist and a Labour peer ignored the request or refused to help. But The Sunday Times says four Labour Lords - Lewis Moonie, Peter Snape, Thomas Taylor and Peter Truscott - agreed to help amend the bill in exchange for retainers. Following those allegations, London's Independent newspaper reported that peers are currently being paid to advise more than...
There's the rub. As Odyssey has discovered before, where there is gold and silver, there is likely to be controversy as well. The publicly traded firm has repeatedly provoked the ire of archaeologists who complain that Odyssey is more interested in profit than in protecting historically valuable artifacts. Currently, the company is locked in a court battle with the country of Spain over ownership of the remains of a ship that experts believe to be the 17th-century Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes...