Word: reaser
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...List (Fridays, 9 p.m. E.T.; debuts Oct. 3) is adapted from a show in Israel, which earlier this year gave us HBO's therapy drama In Treatment. In this dramedy, emphasis on the -medy, single gal Bella Bloom (Elizabeth Reaser - and, yes, Bloom owns a flower shop) throws a bachelorette party and gets thrown for a loop when the bridal party visits a psychic. Bella, the clairvoyant says, will get married within a year, to one of her ex-boyfriends - but if she doesn't find him in that time frame, she will never marry. (Some prophets speak in parables...
...This My-Name-Is-Girl concept may be outlandish, but Ex List is also fresh and raunchily funny (there's a scene in the pilot comparing feminine-waxing choices to historical figures - the "Hitler," the "Gandhi"), and Reaser is winning and adorable. If you can check your skepticism at the psychic's bead curtain, it's a charming, funny, undemanding escape - a sort of romantic procedural. Any praise for the show needs an asterisk, though, because the original producer-writer, Diane Ruggiero, recently quit in a creative dispute with CBS, which she said resisted the changes she wanted to make...
...Reaser does expect a slowdown in 1999, to a growth rate between 2% and 2.5%--probably closer to the higher figure. But she sees only a 20% chance of recession, vs. the fifty-fifty odds some economists were quoting as recently as September. She expects a leveling off in housing and a decline in nonresidential construction, as well as "a widening of the trade gap," but thinks they will be largely offset by further gains in consumer spending, business investment in information technology and "some increase in government spending." Profits of companies whose stocks are included in the Standard & Poor...
Allen Sinai, chief global economist for Primark Decision Economics, a prominent forecasting and consulting firm, is close to Reaser on overall numbers; he predicts 1999 GDP growth of 2% to 2 1/4%. But his tone is considerably less cheery. Many economists, he notes, would consider a 2.5% increase "a trend rate of growth"--that is, roughly what the U.S. could expect to average over a long period. Sinai, however, belongs to a "new economy" school that believes rising productivity makes a 3% annual average possible. Thus he views next year's likely increase to be significantly below potential--perhaps meriting...
Whatever it might be called, Sinai believes, the economy's gains will be too small to prevent a rise in unemployment, from the 4.4% in November to around 5% at the end of 1999. He agrees, however, that the U.S. can fight off an outright recession, largely because, like Reaser, he expects consumer spending to continue to be strong. Some economists are worried that official statistics indicate consumers are spending more than their income, and fear this cannot continue. Sinai, however, says much of the spending is coming from sources the government does not count as "income"--specifically, money that...