Word: thrifts
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...greener pastures. Only when migrating tribes learned to settle down and farm did they need to save and plan, storing seeds and surpluses to tide them over from season to season. We've had 10,000 years to absorb the truth that cultures that don't value THRIFT ultimately flame out and die. Apparently that isn't long enough to learn the lesson...
Judging from tales about the rise and fall of empires, there is always a point when things are going so well that the emperors doubt that anything could ever go wrong. "THRIFT," warned Nero's adviser Seneca, "comes too late when you find it at the bottom of your purse." In the Old World, nations grew fat and then lazy, until they collapsed under their own weight. But that was not to be our story. American greatness--the vision of the founders, the courage of the pioneers, the industry of the nation builders--reflected a mighty faith in the power...
That virtue died with the baby boom, but it had been ailing ever since the Depression, argues cultural historian David Tucker in The Decline of THRIFT in America. That crisis, he writes, invited economists to recast THRIFT as "the contemptible vice which threw sand in the gears of our consumer economy." A White House report in 1931 urged parents to let children pick out their own clothes and furniture, thereby creating in the child "a sense of personal as well as family pride in ownership, and eventually teaching him that his personality can be expressed through things." These days...
...Speaks for Thrift? Obama went first, repeating words that have become a sort of mantra for him as he surveys the economy: "It's not the time for fear or panic." Image is a very real part of the presidency, and it seems safe to say now, nearly two years into this campaign, that President Obama would do well should times call for unruffled calm. He wore a gray suit that fit like a mother's caress, nary a wrinkle or bead of sweat visible, and spoke in the same laconic tone you might use to discuss the weather with...
...betting on a stock's fall without first borrowing shares. But that did nothing to quell widespread speculation about which struggling financial institution would be the next to disappear. British bank Lloyds was in talks to buy beleaguered U.K. mortgage lender HBOS. Washington Mutual, the U.S.'s largest thrift, put itself up for auction, and Wells Fargo and Citigroup might be interested, according to reports. Morgan Stanley appeared to be on the table too. There were murmurs the investment bank was holding conversations with Charlotte-based bank Wachovia. Chinese conglomerate Citic Group, owner of China Citic Bank, was also said...