Word: skittishly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...economic migrants, whether South Asians in the Gulf, Mexicans in the U.S., or Africans in Europe. But the distinction between an illegal job seeker and a person seeking sanctuary from war and repression may not be one governments are willing to make, given that so many countries are already skittish over immigration. Last year alone, 20,000 people arrived in Italy by sea, most of them on rickety vessels from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa; about half that number will seek asylum in the E.U. With anti-immigrant sentiment growing, the European Parliament this week passed tough...
...Hyman’s experience with the drawbacks of a president-led approach may explain why University authorities are skittish about using the term “centralization,” which implies more power for top officials...
...Bear Stearns was the way many financial firms (hedge funds and investment banks, especially) generate their profits: by making bets with borrowed money. To borrow that money, they have to put up collateral--for example, mortgage securities. Lately, many firms have been simultaneously beset by bets gone bad and skittish lenders' calling in loans or demanding more collateral...
...action started in 2001 and 2002, with the Fed bringing interest rates close to zero as the stock market melted down. It continued last fall with the frantic efforts by the Fed and its counterparts in Europe to keep skittish banks lending to one another, and this year with more rate cuts from the Fed. These policies can't cure longer-run problems like the low savings rate and stagnant wages, and they'll probably have all sorts of unpleasant side effects (inflation, for one). But you don't have to work at Visa to think they're preferable...
...credit two scrupulous professors for making the case that skittish politicians won't. In their new book, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, Princeton's Robert George and the University of South Carolina's Christopher Tollefsen argue for treating the embryo as inviolable. Their defense, less theological than biological, is that the embryo is a whole, living member of the human species in its earliest stage of development, not just a potential one or a part of one--and if destroyed, that particular individual has perished. From that conviction arise their rules for both research and reproduction: Don't create...