Word: quartered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fired, but could stay with the company if they were willing to move to India. IBM is generously offering to pay their relocation expenses, but doesn't answer the obvious question of why the people were hired in the U.S. in the first place. IBM just had a record quarter and forecast a strong 2009. Even though this company is fat and happy due to its robust sales, it must have decided that it had been overzealous in its hiring...
...ConocoPhillips (COP) is another company that is firing 4% of its staff. Oil prices are down, but the company is hardly likely to have staffed up for $140 crude. Although revenue at the company fell in in the fourth quarter, for the year COP sales increased to $281 billion from $187 billion in 2007. Profits for 2008 were more than $16 billion...
Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and the Urban Institute, also sees troubling news in the fact that the fourth quarter's measure of gross domestic product (GDP), or the value of all the goods and services the economy churns out, wasn't nearly as bad as economists had thought it would be: down an annualized 3.8%, compared with a predicted drop of 5.4%, according to a Reuters poll. Companies are still producing, Holzer explains, but since no one is buying, inventories are piling up. With a backlog of goods, firms will need fewer workers to keep making more...
Bretton Woods is the mountain resort in New Hampshire where in 1944 the Allied nations met--with the U.S. calling almost all the shots--to plan a postwar financial system. The Bretton Woods creations included the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and a quarter-century of fixed exchange rates built around a U.S. dollar that was linked to gold. The fixed exchange rates and gold standard unraveled in the 1970s, and ever since we've had a system in which the IMF occasionally steps in to help countries in currency crises (usually imposing harsh terms in the process...
...autism coverage--and has gained market share, avoided layoffs and banked $2 billion in cash for these rainy days. Wegmans supermarkets (No. 5) offer workers free yoga classes; biotech leader Genentech (No. 7) features paid sabbaticals, on-site child care and a fitness center; its revenues jumped 25% last quarter. Hewlett suggests even struggling companies that have moved to a four-day workweek rather than fire people may promote both morale and quality of life...