Word: toxicants
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Americans can also look at the choices made by the U.K. to salvage its credit system. Large banks there are being effectively bought out by the government as the U.K. attempts to put a firewall around huge losses from toxic assets. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is already 70% owned by the government and management's kilts have been repossessed. (See pictures of the financial crisis in London...
Energy efficiency can also have its downside. The California building codes you praise ("airtight shells") have harmed some who have reacted to the chemicals trapped inside. The much-touted compact fluorescent lightbulbs can increase symptoms in people with migraines and other conditions. Plus, if they break, they can release toxic mercury. And when one burns out, you can't toss it in the trash; you have to waste gas driving the bulb across the county to a toxic-waste disposal center. Karen M. Campbell, SACRAMENTO, CALIF...
...repackaged the bad Cuban debt--and went on in the 1920s to find ever more creative ways to sell securities and lend to the burgeoning middle class. Mitchell, who became president of the bank in 1921, built City into the first financial supermarket. When everything financial turned toxic in the early 1930s, he became the most prominent scapegoat for the disaster. He was the main target of the famous Pecora hearings in Congress, was arrested for--but not convicted of--tax evasion and resigned in disgrace. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 put an end to the blending of banking...
...roughly 10% of the remaining losses. In return for picking up the rest, the government will require banks to sign agreements binding them to increased rates of lending. Just how much risk that exposes the U.K. government to is unclear; the level of banks' exposure to the kind of toxic assets the insurance protects against is still blurry. And any pickup in the economy could reduce a lender's need to cash in any such policy. Still, "we need to offer this insurance," Darling insisted. "If we don't ... then frankly the lending will not start again, and we will...
...sponging up of all these toxic assets takes the discussion back around to what the government gets in return for such colossal aid. The largest American banks had market capitalizations of as much as $300 billion each two years ago. The purchase of bad assets when stock values were at those levels would have kept shareholder dilution at a reasonable level. The government would have gotten shares for taking the junk off bank books and putting it into its new "bad bank" agency...