Word: multibillion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sometimes erroneous numbers are used innocently; they're the best available figures though everyone knows they're guesstimates. Kinsey's were the only statistics on sex for years. No one in America really has a clue as to the size of the illicit drug trade, though multibillion-dollar figures are commonly tossed around. Mitch Snyder, the late activist for the homeless, once admitted his figures on people without shelter were essentially meaningless. "We have tried to satisfy your gnawing curiosity for a number," he told a congressional hearing, "because we are Americans with Western little minds that have to quantify...
...impose tariffs at various stages of a product's creation, with the cost eventually passed on to the consumer in the price of the finished goods -- a de facto sales tax. Bill Clinton, shying away, dubbed them a "radical" revenue-raising method in February. But faced with the expected multibillion-dollar annual cost of extending medical coverage to all Americans, Health Secretary Donna Shalala and budget guru Alice Rivlin both seemed intrigued by a VAT -- apparently in addition to health care-dedicated revenues to be derived from higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco...
...devising two dozen smart, sexy TV spots for Coca-Cola, and he may be looking to poach other business from the ad agencies. And still he wants more. He has turned himself into the movie industry's highest-profile investment broker in the past few years, arranging the multibillion-dollar acquisitions of Columbia Pictures by Sony and MCA/Universal by Matsushita...
...precedent, clearly, is Ralph Lauren. Lauren brilliantly created a multibillion-dollar kingdom by exploiting middle-class Americans' yearning for a patrician past they never had. As his empire grew, his vision stayed focused. No one admires the Polo king's achievement more than Karan, whose great ambition seems to be to repeat his success...
...ARGUMENTS FOR building the multibillion-dollar space station Freedom is that it would provide a zero-gravity laboratory to grow bigger and purer protein and silicon crystals. But increasingly there is a question as to whether the crystal-growing techniques, at least for proteins, are all that reliable. Reviewing a decade's worth of such space efforts, scientists writing in Nature found that less than a quarter of the experiments actually worked, and then with only mixed success. Their recommendation: rent time aboard the already orbiting Russian space station...