Word: slumps
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Shukla says if the situation does not improve, there could be distress sales within the next six months. The realty sector was heading for a cyclical slowdown even before the current economic slump. Over the past few years, increasing demand had pushed up prices, with speculators jumping in to further inflate the market. Eventually, inventory piled up when buyers refused to pay unrealistically high prices. "So many transactions were taking place between speculators and investors that no one bothered to find out what the end user, the family who would eventually live in the house, would be willing and able...
...everyone is so lucky. Recent industry research shows that falling purchasing power and consumer fear of a looming economic downturn have caused spending in France's cafés and restaurants to slump around 20% this year. Nearly 3,000 of the nation's restaurants closed down or went bankrupt in the first half of 2008 alone. That wave of failure may well rise as newcomers to the sector who relied on credit to get started find themselves stretched to make their payments as revenues slump. "If I were 30, starting out with loans to reimburse...
...Rafael Martín, the mayor of the town of Alameda de la Sagra, says he's most concerned about the impact of the slump on his neighbors, some of whom are already in difficult circumstances because their mortgage payments have jumped while their shifts have been reduced. "It doesn't just affect the people who work in the brick factories," he notes. "It affects the truckers who transport the bricks, and the mechanics who take care of the trucks, and eventually even the bars where those workers go for a drink. It's like the fish that bites...
...help maintain the stability of the U.S. currency. One is that China is one of America's biggest creditors; the country holds some $519 billion in U.S. Treasury bills (second only to Japan's $593 billion), and it doesn't want to see these investments eroded by a slumping dollar. In addition, China is increasingly worried that an economic slump in the U.S. and Europe will curtail its export growth, dealing the Chinese economy a serious blow. To keep the prices of its exports competitive, Beijing has reversed a policy begun three years ago that allowed its own currency...
...wilds of second year? Maybe. And yet some colleges have concluded that the way to deal with the problems potentially caused by coddling is to do even more of it. That's one reason the University of Maine is developing a program to help combat the sophomore slump by building on what first-years learned in Froshville. Vanderbilt has a $1.75 billion capital campaign to turn all the rest of its dorms into neighborhoods where some 5,000 upperclassmen and their professors can live and eat together. "Twenty years ago, there was no talk of retention. It was just about...