Word: netful
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...inspired those iconic Farm Aid concerts, the media's sporadic reports from farm country have tended to focus on floods, droughts and other disasters. But the farm crisis is as over as Barbara Mandrell. Farm incomes are at an all-time high. The median farmer enjoys five times the net worth of the median nonfarmer household. Crop prices have soared--thanks largely to the Federal Government's promotion of corn ethanol over more efficient renewable energies--and yet subsidies have as well...
...just 1 in 150, and closer to 1 in 500 for full-timers. But farm lobbyists say that simply highlights the continuing need for a safety net--and if the net happens to catch Scottie Pippen, Chevron, Ted Turner and 1,324 recipients in bucolic New York City, that's a small price to pay. "The system isn't perfect, but politics is the art of the possible, and the system works," says agribusiness lobbyist Charlie Stenholm, a cotton farmer and former Texas Congressman who was once the committee's top Democrat...
...those reasons, Congressmen Kind and Flake proposed an amendment last summer to eliminate no-strings-attached direct payments, end subsidies to the rich, boost conservation funding and create a more targeted safety net for farmers having rough years. Kind thought they had a shot. A similar package had gotten 200 votes in 2002 without such a grand coalition, and this time Democrats--who had spent six years complaining about Republican giveaways to the rich--were calling the shots. Even the Bush Administration supported payment limits. During speeches to farm groups, Johanns kept displaying maps of all the subsidy recipients...
...their limited disclosure and complex strategies, hedge funds may never be an appropriate option for the average investor - participation is generally restricted to those with high net worth who can afford the $1 million minimum investment typically required by fund managers. "It's a professional's market," says Thomas Whelan, chief executive of Greenwich Alternative Investments, which operates a fund of hedge funds. "You need to be able to research and understand what the funds do and then monitor them...
...Cambodia has been ravaged by civil strife. The poisonous aftermath still lingers in mine-strewn soil, where the nation's farmers scrape a living. One of the consequences is that there's no lack of amputees keen to strap on an artificial limb and hit a ball over a net. Since 2002, a wet-season disabled volleyball league has nurtured a squad of high-flying semipro athletes who came fourth at the 2005 World Cup in Canada and are gunning for gold on home soil. Christian Zepp, 26, the team's German coach who arrived in September, reckons a place...