Word: patchwork
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...modern mortgage industry consists of several sectors, some regulated tightly by the feds and others covered by only a porous patchwork of state oversight. The least regulated are the independent mortgage lenders, which sell the loans they write to Wall Street or to one of those government-sponsored enterprises with a funny name--Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae. Some of these lenders are perfectly respectable. Others, such as subprime biggies New Century Financial and American Home Mortgage, are now bankrupt...
...fact that sushi is so commonplace - even if one of its principal condiments is not - is a miracle of modern commerce. In The Sushi Economy, Sasha Issenberg follows fish along a formidable logistics chain stretching from Canadian fishermen to Japanese auctioneers to Libyan tuna smugglers. He describes a patchwork economy in which traders bid thousands on a carcass, and minor variations in weather send ripples across continents. In Issenberg's view, the sushi trade symbolizes a "virtuous global commerce" - a system of exchange in which handshakes and individual innovations trump the faceless forces of multinational corporations. "Power is decentralized...
...dominion in India. The sprawling mansion that today houses the governor of West Bengal - a chiefly symbolic role akin to India's presidency - was, until 1911, the seat of British power throughout all of Asia. "When the house was built, the British Empire in India was like a little patchwork of crimson spots on the map of the Indian continent," then Viceroy Lord Curzon wrote of the significance of his former abode. "When it was abandoned [in 1911, when the capital was moved to New Delhi], that color had overspread and suffused the whole...
...DORGAN, a Minnesota bridge engineer, on the state's strategy of making patchwork fixes on the Interstate 35W bridge, which collapsed Aug. 1. The bridge was rated "structurally deficient" 17 years...
...watchdog over public agencies, and ongoing investigations into corruption by past officials - an effort that Nagin, to his credit, spearheaded in his first term. New population statistics show that the city has regained more than half of its pre-Katrina population. Citizen-led reforms have consolidated the city's patchwork and inefficient network of property assessors and replaced the politician-dominated levee oversight system with a centralized office staffed largely by engineers and scientists. Enrollment at Tulane and Loyola University, New Orleans' prestigious private colleges, has rebounded. And the city's notoriously underperforming school system is showing signs of improvement...