Word: major
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...staffers claim that Obama needed the leaders of the various committees to tell him what the bill required to garner enough votes to pass. Either way, the fact that the bill is the product of free-spending congressional committees is likely to hurt Obama. It is defining his first major effort to fix the economy not as a new way of doing business in Washington but as a massive exercise in more of the same...
...move is opposed by most Republicans, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has demanded that it be stripped from the bill. Major U.S. companies like General Electric and Caterpillar have also opposed the provision, saying it will hurt their ability to win contracts abroad - and impose layers of bureaucracy on what is already likely to be a cumbersome contracting process...
...crisis has already claimed one major victim. In late January, Germany's Qimonda, the world's fifth-largest DRAM maker, filed for bankruptcy. Several other chipmakers have sought emergency aid. In late December, the creditors of South Korea's Hynix, the world's second-biggest DRAM maker, agreed to provide $600 million of aid to the company, including new loans, as its losses mounted...
...worst-off of all the beleaguered chipmakers are the six major DRAM manufacturers in Taiwan, which lost a combined $3.5 billion in 2008, according to the Taiwan government. Taiwan's firms are in especially rough shape because they lack the scale, financial resources and technical prowess of their larger Korean and American rivals. The companies' woes are pushing the Taiwan government toward a bailout of the industry. "We have the intention and the resolve to help the DRAM companies through difficult times," Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou reportedly told electronics industry executives in early January. Aid is crucial, policymakers believe...
...were told they must revise their proposals with more measures aimed at improving their competitiveness and technological capabilities. "The government sees this [aid] as an investment," Lu says, "We don't want to just bail out the industry." The result will likely be consolidation of the country's six major DRAM makers into fewer firms, including possible sales of stakes or entire companies to better capitalized foreign rivals. "It looks like merging is the direction of the industry," says Cecilia Shih, a manager at the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association...