Word: huge
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gotten even worse than that: during the relatively severe downturn of 1974, giving declined 5.4%. Given that the current crisis seems unprecedented in its scope, no one is willing to predict just how bad things might get for the nonprofit sector. "The ramifications are absolutely going to be huge," says Gordon J. Campbell, CEO and president of United Way of New York City...
...hardest: Tokyo's Nikkei index fell nearly 10%, capping a week that saw Japanese shares plummet 25%, the worst weekly performance in the index's history. Investors fled after the credit squeeze claimed its first Japanese victim: Yamato Life Insurance Co., which filed for bankruptcy Friday after suffering huge losses in its securities holdings. Yamato's collapse, the first by a Japanese insurance company since 2001, sparked fresh worries about the health of the country's financial institutions. "My concern is whether the banks and insurance companies can keep standing," says Yukiko Kanoh, 53, an administrative assistant in Yokohama...
Consumers could be forgiven for being jittery this week when news came that MetLife and The Hartford, two well known insurance giants, had experienced huge losses on their investments and were seeking billions in private investment to keep up their reserves. Their stocks have dropped by at least half in just a month. After all, wasn't this the way Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia started their slides into oblivion...
Insurance companies did invest in real estate and mortgages, he says, but not in the huge way the banks did - only about 10% of investments were in those areas industry-wide. It is those investments that have caused recent reported investment losses at MetLife and The Hartford. About two-thirds of insurance company investments are in solid, conservative instruments like federal and municipal bonds. Even AIG, the insurance giant bailed out by the federal government in September, is solvent in its insurance operation. The losses at AIG came mostly from the unrelated financial services division, which other insurance companies...
...sense of permanence," says Greg Priddy, oil analyst for the Eurasia Group in Washington. Instead of believing that gas prices would finally fall again, many began changing their daily habits - they started driving the smaller car in a two-car garage or consolidating shopping trips. That has meant a huge slump in Americans' gas use. Even before the market meltdown, Americans consumed 800,000 barrels of oil a day less during the first half of this year than the same period last year. As demand fell, so did prices, and as prices have fallen, investors have begun pulling money...