Word: turning
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...scheme seemed a bit convoluted from the start, but it offered oodles of money to the participants. An American investor agreed to lease tram and subway cars from BVG, Berlin's mass-transit company. And BVG, in turn, leased them back for terms ranging from 12 to 30 years. Under U.S. tax law at the time, the American investor was able to take a depreciation tax benefit on the equipment because it was held on a long-term lease - a financial benefit the investor shared with BVG. (Read about Paris' public bicycle system...
...they quickly paid off. Over the many deals, BVG received cash payments from the American investors totaling €68.9 million, or about $90.6 million at current exchange rates. BVG in turn paid the American investors monthly rent to use the equipment, a return the Americans enhanced with that big tax break. For its part, BVG used the money it derived from the deals to pay down debt, which has saved it €35 million ($46 million) in interest payments. It was a shell game of sorts, but everyone made out - except, of course, the U.S. taxpayers, who were unwittingly subsidizing...
...history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company. Let's call these start-ups LILOs, for "a little in, a lot out." These are Web-based businesses that cost almost nothing to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers (if you work hard and are patient, but we'll get to that part of the story...
...book The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America. While the average American scores a 15.3 on the Narcissism Personality Inventory, a 40-question test long used by psychologists, celebrities averaged 17.84. Longtime stars and newbies scored similarly, which might lead you to conclude that fame doesn't turn people into narcissists - it just attracts them. The more a person's fame was the unintended by-product of a skill, like playing an instrument, the lower the score. Reality-show participants landed numbers you'd expect only from 2-year-olds and fascist dictators. (Watch Stein interview celebrities...
Local contractor Wayne Mayo, 54, has watched this long slump up close. Like many other people in St. Helens, he used to work in the timber industry, as a lumber broker. But his more recent turn, as a general contractor, brought him face-to-face with an economic force he felt he could influence: illegal immigration. Although St. Helens has a relatively small Hispanic community - some legal, some illegal - the town is just 30 miles (about 50 km) from major population centers like Portland and Beaverton, close enough that out-of-town contractors with crews of underpaid, underdocumented construction workers...