Word: lax
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...Economists met during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month, the perspectives varied according to geography. "The U.S. economy is on steroids," said a worried Pascal Blanque, chief economist at the French bank Credit Agricole. Blanque fears an America bulking up on dangerous deficits, a lax monetary policy and the falling dollar. "The European economy is on tranquilizers," retorted Laura D'Andrea Tyson, dean of the London Business School and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton Administration. She argues that Europe is both too complacent about its weak growth and strong common...
Since that long boom ended in 2001, though, griping and whining have been ascendant. Greenspan was a bubble blower, the main criticism goes, a man whose lax monetary policies encouraged excess and speculation. What's more, he failed to thwart George W. Bush's demolition of the budget surpluses built up in the Clinton years. These complaints were steadily gaining in volume, thanks to the collapse of a mortgage-lending boom that began on Greenspan's watch, when the man jumped into the fray in mid-September with The Age of Turbulence, a new book about his life...
...many of whom are former special operations personnel from U.S. military branches. However, critics often refer to these professionals as modern-day mercenaries; soldiers-for-hire who retired or are cherry-picked from the military by Blackwater and firms like it, often attracted by the higher wages and comparatively lax disciplinary standards.This is not to say that the government should never contract out services to the lowest bidder in order to streamline operations or increase capabilities at home or abroad. But Blackwater’s contracts in Iraq alone, which total $800 million, were mostly no-bid contracts granted...
...Robert Yancey, a program director at a New York City drug clinic called Turning Point, blames the dangerously lax attitude toward cocaine in the 1970s for fueling the drug's popularity - and fostering the crack epidemic of the 1980s. One law enforcement official in Philadelphia says a contemporary analogy is the growing abuse of prescription painkillers, which now ranks second - behind marijuana use - as the nation's most prevalent illegal drug problem, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But in tracking drugs like OxyContin, also known as "hillbilly heroin," officials must first distinguish drug abuse from mere...
Since 2005, for example, experts had been arguing that mortgage-lending standards had grown unsustainably lax, that real estate prices couldn't keep rising, that a sharp housing correction was in the offing. They were right. But those who actually worked in the business of writing, packaging and investing in mortgage loans couldn't act on such concerns and expect to stay employed. There was too much money to be made running with the herd. Or dancing with it, as Citigroup CEO Charles Prince put it in a memorable July interview. "As long as the music is playing...