Word: rising
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...growth," wrote economist (and now Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman back in 1990, "is the single most important factor affecting our economic well-being." It was growth in productivity - most commonly measured as economic output per hour worked - during the Industrial Revolution that powered the rise of the West out of millenniums of stagnation. It was a productivity boom that ushered in America's postwar era of mass affluence...
...Until the mid-'90s, that is, when productivity growth rebounded, from about 1.5% a year to more than 2.5%. The engine apparently was the rise of the computer and the Internet. And the boom continued even after the technology bust of 2001. In 2006-07, productivity growth slumped to pre-1995 levels, before rebounding somewhat in the first half of this year. But year-to-year numbers can be confusingly noisy; it's the trend that matters. Gordon, who doesn't buy that computers and the Internet are nearly as economically significant as cars, electricity and their ilk, thinks...
...July, Congress allocated $300 billion for a new plan, Hope for Homeowners, to help borrowers stay in their houses. It went into effect this month, but analysts warn that it won't stop the rise in foreclosures. An April report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that banks would refinance only about 400,000 home loans, possibly fewer. And in recent congressional testimony, officials from JPMorgan Chase said only about $2.5 billion of its home loans (some 14,000 borrowers) of the $845 billion in home loans it services would qualify for the program. Worse, warns the CBO, nearly...
...study released by the Open Europe think tank Monday estimates that the cost of the package as a whole will rise to almost $100 billion a year by 2020. Open Europe Research Director Hugo Robinson said the climate change plan "comes at exactly the wrong time for hard-pressed families all around Europe," and "will channel money towards very expensive and inefficient means of reducing CO2 emissions, imposing unnecessarily high costs on people struggling through already tough economic conditions...
...Brussels summit did not formally decide anything on the climate change package: the 2020 target still remains a 20% cut in carbon emissions, a 20% boost in renewable energy, and a 20% rise in energy efficiency. But the mood has turned, and officials have backed away from pushing for details on how to achieve the cuts. E.U. governments and the European Parliament still have to agree them by December and turn them into law before next June's European elections...