Word: profiteer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Investors had long taken it for granted that bank profits would go up at least moderately every year. No more: the profit record has turned spotty. Some banks are still increasing their earnings; Bank of America raised its profits in 1975 by 17%. Citibank's earnings for all 1975 will be up about 10%, but the bank recently disclosed that for the fourth quarter it will report its first decline from a year earlier since 1969. Chase in the third quarter reported earnings a stunning 56% below those for the 1974 period, and New York's Marine Midland...
...forefront of expansion is exactly where Wriston intends to keep Citibank. Today, while other bankers talk of retrenchment and caution, Wriston clings to his goal of a 15% profit growth each year (an aim that Citibank did not quite achieve in 1975). Many bankers believe that such a target is more appropriate for a growth company like IBM or Xerox than for a bank, which has the primary responsibility of safeguarding depositors' money. Wriston concedes that rapid expansion may increase bad-loan write-offs, but makes two arguments for doing it nonetheless. Says he: "If we didn...
Dame Agatha Christie made more profit out of murder than any woman since Lucrezia Borgia. One estimate of her total earnings from more than a half-century of writing is $20 million. But the exact amount remains a mystery not likely to be solved even when her will is read. Her royalty arrangements and trusts would tax the brains of her two famous detectives, M. Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. In addition, Agatha Christie had already given away millions to her family. Her only grandson, Mathew Prichard, 32, was eight years old when she presented him with sole rights...
...nature of the beast. It is no more reasonable to expect the government to run a cheap, efficient system of mail delivery than it is to expect water to run uphill. The USPS is a monopoly, and a government-operated one at that. It has no profit motive; in the private sector, a firm has to make a profit to survive, and it can only do that by providing people with a service they want at a price they are willing to pay. If it raises its prices, a private firm faces the threat of competition from other firms. None...
...their legal monopoly, and some have even proposed expanding it to eliminate the budding competition in lower classes of mail. One claim is that, if wide-open competition is permitted, firms will only exploit the lucrative first-class letter market, the only class in which the USPS makes a profit. According to this argument, private price-cutting will make it impossible for the USPS to compete in first-class mail, leaving it with only money-losing lower classes. But private firms have already shown their readiness and ability to deliver lower classes of mail at a profit, despite the obstacles...