Word: gloom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Such optimism in the face of prevailing economic gloom is understandable given the apparently recession-proof recipe McDonald's has cooked up. Indeed, while most companies limped out of 2008 on slumping results that look likely to plummet in 2009, McDonald's on Monday announced earnings of $985.3 million in the fourth quarter of last year. While that near billion-dollar activity represented a 23% drop over the same period the previous year - due mostly to an extraordinary tax bonus accounted to 2007 books - McDonald's also revealed an 11% rise in fourth-quarter consolidated operating income to $1.5 billion...
...lethal combination of mismanagement, overexpansion and economic gloom is driving the boom in retail liquidations. During better days, a company could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the banks would finance its operations until the shops could restructure. These so-called debtor-in-possession, or DIP, loans kept the company operating. In the early 1990s, for example, Macy's spent nearly two years in Chapter 11. Today, banks aren't keen to lend to anyone, least of all a retailer in miserable shape. (See the worst business deals...
...will miss 2008. Stock markets tanked. Government budgets bled as billions went to bail out banks. Thousands lost their jobs or their homes, or both. Yet amid the gloom there was one reason to celebrate as the year ended: filling your car with gas got cheaper with each day. After hitting a high of $147 a barrel in July, world oil prices have crashed to their lowest levels since 2004. By Jan. 7 the cost of oil for February delivery was around $43 a barrel - less than half the price of a year earlier. Goldman Sachs last month predicted that...
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep your mail carrier from making the daily rounds, promises the U.S. Postal Service's unofficial motto - but the economy might. With 9.5 billion fewer letters and packages delivered in the 2008 fiscal year compared with 2007, the biggest mail volume decline in history has contributed to the agency's $2.8 billion loss for the year. That partly explains why shipping prices will rise 5% this month (a bigger hike than all shipping increases in 2008), with a stamp price jump to follow in May. The decline could also...
...Automobiles "R" Still Us As someone who has chosen to return to Detroit after living in New York City and San Francisco, I am offended by the media stereotype of Rust Belt workers left behind in a city of gloom [Dec. 15]. It seems easy to rationalize abandoning the car companies that helped build America's industrial legacy. What's harder is to recognize the significance of these companies as building blocks of the American story and the importance of preserving and reinventing them. The spirit that built Detroit is still alive, and those of us who live here...