Word: optioning
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Optimism wasn't just a psycho-spiritual lifestyle option; by the mid-'00s it had become increasingly mandatory. Positive psychologists, inspired by a totally overoptimistic reading of the data, proclaimed that optimism lengthens the life span, ameliorates aging and cures cancer. In the past few years, some breast-cancer support groups have expelled members whose tumors metastasized, lest they bring the other members down. In the workplace, employers culled "negative" people, like those in the finance industry who had the temerity to suggest that their company's subprime exposure might be too high. No one dared be the bearer...
...President Obama, after all, is the Commander in Chief of American forces at war on two fronts. At least rhetorically, he has hasn't ruled out the option of taking military action against Iran's nuclear program. And while he has focused his energies on trying to kick start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, his entreaties haven't exactly been well received or borne any fruit. In all these foreign policy quandaries, not to mention North Korea's nuclear program, the President will face ugly choices, none of which will be ameliorated by the kudos of a Nobel Peace Prize...
...solid returns for Oxy's bond-heavy pension fund - so much so that Oxy's accountants figured the plan was overfunded by $600 million. For Oxy to get at that cash, pension laws required it to close its fund and start again. It did so with a far cheaper option: the employee-funded 401(k). The company made it clear that with the high interest rates at the time, Oxy employees could see their 401(k) account balances soar with little risk. Few doubted it - Oxy, like most other big companies of that era, had always taken care...
...system is not in the cards. "I think there is broad political support for the government administering some sort of retirement plan," says Christian Weller, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. "But even if health-care reform is passed, the debate over the public option has made a similar solution for retirement less likely...
...West would prefer that Iran did not have the civilian nuclear infrastructure that would give it the option of building weapons, but the more likely outcome of a diplomatic process is one that strengthens safeguards against weaponization rather than reversing Tehran's existing enrichment capacity. And the question of whether that's acceptable to the West will ultimately be answered by a cost-benefit analysis of the available alternatives...