Word: lasting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There are plenty of reasons to believe that small businesses aren't getting the credit they need. In the last three months of 2009, business lending at smaller banks, which tend to cater to smaller companies, was down at a 13% annual rate, according to the Federal Reserve. Not only are loans harder to come by, but they're also more expensive. That has the potential to slow down economic recovery, since firms that can't borrow often can't expand. Policymakers have responded with a number of programs to boost small-business lending, including an Obama Administration proposal...
Talk to business owners, though, and the picture is a lot more complicated. A poll conducted at the end of last year by the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business trade group, found that companies were overwhelmingly more concerned about slow or declining sales than access to credit. A full 51% of businesses cited sales as their top concern, while only 8% cited the ability to borrow money. An additional 22% cited uncertainty as their biggest worry. In unstable times, even healthy companies are unlikely to want to take on debt. (See the top 10 bankruptcies...
...Orleans and AACAP's president-elect. For example, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the local hospital doesn't have a child psychiatrist, so doctors some six hours away, at Michigan State University in East Lansing, treat patients via videoconferencing. In South Carolina, a statewide telepsychiatry program established last summer has cut the average waiting period for a child to get a psychiatric consultation from several days (in part because many families in rural areas lack transportation to get to an urban hospital) to a few hours...
House Democratic sources credited Representative John Dingell, the longest serving member in the history of Congress and dean of the Michigan delegation, for bringing Stupak around. Stupak, a Dingell protégé, was in tears when Dingell lost his House Energy and Commerce gavel to Henry Waxman last year - the committee is the only one Stupak has served on since his election to Congress in 1992. Health care reform has been Dingell's top priority during his 54 years in office and, in fact, the House bill was named for him. "Mr. Dingell had a piece of me yesterday...
...Last month, Bedouin killed two policemen and freed suspects who were on their way to a court hearing. And in November, clashes injured 11 police officers when they tried to seize cement bound for the Gaza tunnels. (There is precedent for worse: in November 2008, violence erupted after police killed three Bedouin during a protest; Bedouin retaliated by kidnapping 25 police officers and overrunning a police post. In 2007, Bedouin protesters set fire to the ruling-party headquarters in Al-Arish.) (See the line of political succession in Egypt...