Word: indexers
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...Some experts suggested that further changes could help ensure future solvency in the trust fund and also benefit unemployed workers. “One thing that could increase the long-term stability of a system is to increase the wage base on which unemployment taxes are calculated, and to index that to inflation,” said Noah Berger, the executive director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. The state currently taxes up to $14,000 of employee income. Margaret Monsell, an attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, voiced similar suggestions. “There?...
Obama knows that just beyond the flashbulbs, a darkening storm hangs over the nation. The national and global economies continue to deteriorate at a terrifying pace. The ISM Manufacturing Index, a key measurement of domestic production, hit a 28-year low in December. Payrolls fell an additional half million last month, leading economists to predict that the total job losses in 2008 were greater than at any point since the immediate aftermath of World War II. The housing-price free fall has yet to show any clear sign of stabilization...
...seas instead. There may be no better measure of the reach, depth and potential duration of the global economic slowdown than the fast-sinking fortunes of the shipping industry. From the historic docks of Rotterdam to China's booming trading hub of Ningbo, troubling symptoms abound. The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost of shipping raw materials, has plummeted from an all-time high of 11,793 last May to below 800, a 22-year low. The daily rental rate for the largest bulk carriers plunged from $234,000 last summer to less than $3,000 in early December...
...Then there is the problem of rampant corruption, which has allowed top officials to earn fortunes. Transparency International's latest corruption index places Guinea 173 out of 180 countries. Guineans have to bribe officials in order to receive water, electricity, and basic health care, the group said. With policing and the court system in a shambles, Guinea has also become a major hub for Latin American cocaine traffickers, who increasingly use West Africa as the conduit to the lucrative cocaine market in nearby Europe. When TIME visited neighboring Guinea Bissau in 2007, several Colombian cocaine traffickers were operating there...
...appreciation of the yen slashes Japan's GDP growth rate by 0.3% to 0.4% points, says Masafumi Yamamoto, head of foreign exchange strategy for Japan at Royal Bank of Scotland. "Yen appreciation is also causing the Nikkei [stock index] plunge," he says. And that's affecting the confidence of Japan's businesses. On Monday, figures of the Bank of Japan's tankan survey, a quarterly survey of business sentiment in Japan, fell to a seven-year low. The tankan figure showed the steepest quarter over quarter decline in 34 years. The economy is expected to decline 0.8% for the fiscal...