Word: largest
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most dramatic U.S. military maneuvers over the past 20 years in the Caribbean have been the periodic mock invasions of Vieques Island just off Puerto Rico's eastern coast, usually accompanied by vociferous protests from local fishermen. The largest of these practice assaults, and the one whose scale and timing most resembled the military exercises now being planned, began on Oct. 21, 1962. It included 7,500 Marines and four aircraft carriers. The goal was to "liberate" the island from a mythical dictator named Ortsac, which happens to be Castro spelled backward. The following day John Kennedy went...
...default. D for debacle. With its coffers almost empty, WPPSS or Whoops, as everyone now calls the agency, formally declared that it could not repay $2.25 billion in bonds used to finance partial construction of two now abandoned nuclear power plants in Washington State. It is by far the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history, and the damage is incalculable. The fiasco has robbed thousands of investors of their savings, shaken confidence in the municipal bond market, angered and humiliated the people of the Northwest, tarnished the reputations of some of Wall Street's leading institutions and provoked...
Defaults on tax-exempt municipal bonds like those issued on Whoops have been relatively infrequent and have usually involved smallish sums. Only 685 defaults have occurred since 1940, out of 301,016 municipal bond issues. In terms of money lost, each of the three largest were around one-twentieth the size of last week's fizzle. The West Virginia Turnpike Commission defaulted on $133 million in bonds in 1958. Chicago's Calumet Skyway collapsed under bond indebtedness of $101 million in 1963, and investors were short-changed in 1978 when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Commission reneged...
...vice chairman in 1973. He quickly moved up to chairman and embarked on cost cutting and rapid expansion. In 1977 the company merged with Kuhn, Loeb & Co., a 1,200-employee investment-banking house with $12 million in capital. Lehman Bros, now ranks as Wall Street's sixth largest firm and has more than 3,000 employees. The company earned about $140 million before taxes in fiscal 1982, and has already topped that this year...
...foundation began operations after the death in 1978 of Entrepreneur John D. MacArthur, sole stockholder of the Bankers Life and Casualty insurance company. With assets of $930 million, the foundation is the nation's fourth largest (after the Ford, Johnson and Kellogg funds). MacArthur left the disposition of his money up to the trustees, who hit upon the idea of making creative people free of financial worries. Says Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles, a winner in 1981: "I can't help but begin to wonder what life will be like when this is over...