Word: yank
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...deep into corporate America. Such systems rank employees along a bell curve in which the top 10% typically receive an A grade or equivalent, the middle 80% earn a B, and the bottom 10% earn a C--and a send-off if they don't improve. Such "rank and yank" systems gained popularity in the 1990s, and about a third of companies now use them, up from 13% in 1997, according to the consulting firm DDI. "Of course, you don't want to make the B's feel bad, but you also want to instill a philosophy of continual improvement...
...North Korea were to collapse. Refugees might stream across the Demilitarized Zone, and Seoul would have to quickly provide aid to the Northerners in order to stem the tide while converting public buildings like schools into temporary shelters. Foreign investors might get spooked by the chaos and yank money from South Korea. Then there are the long-term problems of integrating the high-tech South Korean economy and the more primitive North Korean one. The new flood of cheap North Korean labor and land would potentially depress wages and property prices in the South. Plus, South Korean industry might stamp...
Jaundiced views of the U.S. are a proven crowd pleaser in London. Michael Moore, the insurrectionist documentarian, got booed off the Oscar stage for criticizing Bush's foreign policy, but in London late last year, his one-man stage show--with bits like a nightly "Stump the Yank" quiz--was a smash hit. Even the American plays that are increasingly shoving aside Shakespeare and Stoppard on the West End (often with big-name U.S. stars in the cast) seem to be reveling in the worst of the U.S. In the current hit revival of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity...
...French cycling fans could choose the ideal athlete to win the centennial edition of the Tour de France, who would he be? He'd be French, of course. Surely the last thing the French would want to see is the crowning of a Yank as Tour champ - especially one who hails from the same state as George W. Bush. What could be more galling to the Gauls on July 27 than to see Lance Armstrong - whose record, cocksure manner and red-white-and-blue, government-sponsored U.S. Postal Service team screams American domination - atop the podium on the Champs-Elys...
...kept calling for the freedom of 1,300 political prisoners and for democratic reforms that never came. Meanwhile, Suu Kyi drew unnervingly large crowds on trips into Burma's hinterland to open NLD branches. And the economy continued to implode. Semilegal finance companies collapsed, and angry depositors raced to yank their savings out of failing banks. Businesses couldn't make their payrolls, and thousands of workers were laid...