Word: debt
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...companies, though, are seeing the same benefit. As a recent Merrill Lynch report pointed out, when companies with lower credit ratings are going to issue debt, they're still paying up. Bonds that fall in the lowest category that still manage to be considered "investment grade" are yielding 5.3 percentage points more than government bonds. That's down from a high spread of 6.2 but still far above the 22-year average of 2.2 points. High-yield bonds, which are even riskier, are at a spread of 15.2. That's down from a high of 19.8 - yet three times...
...boom in the 1970s and '80s, as did new methods of analyzing consumer data to unearth the most lucrative "revolvers," those who often carry high balances but are unlikely to default. Critics say contracts today, with their ever shifting terms and complex legalese, have helped customers get into more debt than they bargained for. Though Congress shelved earlier proposals for a credit-card holders' bill of rights, a new version was introduced in January, and this time, economic hardship coupled with populist outrage could translate into legislative change...
...past includes bad mortgage loans, collateralized debt obligations and all manner of other lunkheaded lending decisions. It was also characterized by a 15-year decline in the net interest margin, a core measure of bank profitability that is the difference between what banks pay to borrow and what they charge to lend. The net interest margin is partly a product of interest rates: banks borrow short term and lend long term, so when long-term interest rates drop below short-term rates (as happened three times in the past 15 years), margins are squeezed. But another big factor has been...
That was the house built on sand. His house built on rock had five pillars - new rules for Wall Street, new initiatives in education, alternative energy and health care, and eventually budget savings that would bring down the national debt - which did sound a bit prosaic. Democratic politicians have been promising one or another, if not all, of the above since Franklin Roosevelt reinvented American government in the 1930s. But Obama was making his case in the midst of a national crisis, at a moment when it seemed possible that he might enact much of what he was seeking...
...isolation from their peers. Another problem: the lack of 24-hour medical care inside the prison. Worse, kids must sometimes share mom's punishment for bad behavior, like solitary confinement. As a result, not every prisoner mom is happy about having her children with her. "I am paying my debt to society but that doesn't mean that my children should be paying the consequences of my actions too," says Casilda Calle, another prisoner...