Word: homely
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Probably not. There are two crucial differences. One is that much of today's U.S. trade deficit comes from U.S.-based corporations selling products at home that were partly or entirely made in China. As a result, the trade relationship with China has become far more ingrained in the economic fabric of the U.S. than that with Japan ever was. Some evidence: in the first nine months of 2009, the global economic slowdown cut the U.S. deficit with Japan 47% compared with the first nine months of 2008. The deficit with China dropped just...
...Laurie Humphreys had already spent the majority of his short life in a Southampton orphanage in England. He was 13, and clearly remembers the BBC Home Service for schools announcing that Australia needed more migrants. "When the sisters asked who wanted to go to Australia, my hand was one of the first to go up," he recalls...
Such exuberance is both good news and bad for China's leadership. The revival of the real estate industry is a key reason that China's economy is emerging from the global recession with such strength. But frothy increases in home prices are also fueling concerns that the property boom could turn into an unstable and dangerous bubble. According to government data, property prices in 70 cities rose 3.9% in October from a year earlier - the largest increase in 14 months. In 20 of the cities, prices jumped more than 1% from the month before. The phenomenon isn't limited...
...surged an eye-popping 144%, to $1.3 trillion, from the same period in 2008. The easy money policy has led to a fantastic increase in property deals - up 82% in October (by volume of floor space) from the same month a year earlier. There is also concern percolating that home prices in major cities are rising out of the reach of the average Chinese. Not only could that cause social discontent, it may also dampen consumption - which China's policymakers desperately need to increase. If families need to allocate more and more of their income to housing, that drains away...
While newspapers in the U.S. are still filled with reports of foreclosures and ongoing declines in home prices, the headlines in China tell a different story. One local daily reports that in Shanghai on Oct. 30, more than 200 potential buyers crammed into the sales office of a new housing development, snapping up 120 of the 150 available apartments in just one night. Several weeks earlier in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, 300 people lined up to buy new apartments, some of them arriving two days before the sale. A picture in the local press showed eager customers...