Word: rating
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...crises of 1997 and 1998, China's success in keeping the yuan fixed at 8.3 yuan to the dollar was applauded in the West as a major contribution to averting financial chaos. Since 2005, China has been willing to allow the yuan to appreciate a bit (the current exchange rate is 6.8 yuan to the dollar). It just hasn't been willing to do this on any but its own extremely conservative terms...
...year ago, the credit crisis caused the municipal-bond market to grind to a halt. Shell-shocked investors pulled back from even munis, which are normally considered a relatively safe bet. Bond yields soared. Local governments were forced to delay raising money. And auctions of short-term variable-rate muni securities failed. (Read "Five Painless Ways to Cut Expenses...
...have made muni bonds more attractive to pension funds and other nonprofit (i.e., tax-free) investors. And that new demand is driving down the yields on traditional muni bonds because there are relatively fewer of them issued. BABs, unlike traditional munis, are taxable. For most individual investors, the interest-rate difference is a wash - a high net worth investor would owe the extra yield they get from the BAB back in taxes, so they'd wind up with roughly the same after-tax yield as if they had bought a lower-yielding tax-free muni...
...Small-business company sales fell 3.8% on average in the first 10 months of 2009, which reverses the 2.4% gain posted in 2008, according to Sageworks, which provides software and consulting services to private business. "That's almost a 6% decline in the sales growth rate," says Andrew White, the firm's chief financial officer. Large publicly traded companies fared better, with sales slipping only 1.8% on average in the first 10 months of the year, he says...
...small businesses train or hire employees, that's going to impact the jobless rate," concurs White...