Word: posts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Meanwhile, Yum! Brands, parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has promised to post calorie information on its menus by January 2011. If the creator of KFC's Famous Bowls - fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy and shredded cheese packed together for your gut-busting pleasure - volunteers to share these numbers, what excuse can other chains claim for not following suit, particularly if Washington lags in forcing them to do so? The writing is on the wall. And perhaps, as a result, fewer calories will be in your stomach...
This is an extremely fashionable topic at the moment. Some cultural observers even think Americans are due for a prolonged shift away from the consumption obsession of the post--World War II era. That strikes me as an iffy bet, but it is clear that the debt-fueled consumer spending binge of the past couple of decades is over. The household debt-to-income percentage more than doubled, from 65% in 1982 to 135% in 2007. That turned out to be way too much for us to handle, and now the leveraging process has gone into reverse. The latest household...
...Great Moderation was a name economists gave to a post-1982 era marked by only two mild recessions and long stretches of uninterrupted growth. That's over, and the transition to whatever comes next will, if history is any guide, be messy. From 1970 to '82, the U.S. economy was hit by four downturns, two of which (1973-75 and 1981-82) until recently competed for the title of "worst since the Great Depression." The current recession has undisputed claim to that title. And while we may be about to climb out of it, don't be surprised...
...Russia Planning for A Post-U.S. World Russian President Dmitri Medvedev hosted the first summit of the world's largest emerging economies to discuss efforts to reduce their reliance on the U.S. The so-called BRIC states--Brazil, Russia, India and China--are forecast to become four of the six biggest economies in the world by 2050. The group, which holds some 40% of the world's gold and hard-currency reserves, has announced plans to shift some out of U.S. dollars. "There can be no successful global currency system," said Medvedev, "if the financial instruments used are denominated...
Despite the initial post-election mayhem, the government had some reason to believe that the fury would subside. Since Ahmadinejad's victory in 2005, when many voters stayed away from the polls, the reform movement had been largely dormant. So when Mousavi called for a demonstration on June 15, no one was sure how many people would show up. Some of his supporters may well have resigned themselves to defeat--until Ahmadinejad's victory speech, in which he compared the protesters to fans upset about losing a soccer match and called them a minority of "twigs and mote." A number...