Word: shadows
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...deepest recession since the 1930s cast a shadow over the year, as the U.S. economy hemorrhaged jobs, manufacturing continued to erode, and housing prices failed to recover from the previous year's crash. Unemployment rose to 10.2%--the highest rate in 26 years--despite the Obama Administration's stimulus efforts, which pumped billions into the economy. Detroit was hit especially hard: Ford saw a steep drop in sales, Chrysler was taken over by Italian firm Fiat, and GM briefly entered bankruptcy. One bright spot was Wall Street, where stocks reversed much of 2008's decline. The economy showed encouraging growth...
Meanwhile, the Sana'a government is in the middle of another ferocious war, against its Houthi minority, Yemeni followers of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam. That introduces the shadow - both real and imagined - of the primary Shi'a power in the region, Iran, which is happy to take credit even if its actual influence may still be negligible. When Iran is mentioned, however, both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the predominant Sunni power in the region, start quaking. And al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, no friend to any of the parties, is happy to sow destabilization...
Even these figures leave out people who say they want a job but haven't looked in the past year. Economist and gadfly John Williams, whose online newsletter Shadow Government Statistics has gained a big following lately, adds them in, makes a few tweaks and gets to 21.8% unemployment in November, down from 22.1% in October...
...pictures of the long shadow of Ayatullah Khomeini...
...helping countries cut back on deforestation - a goal that many had hoped might be one of the few concrete achievements from Copenhagen. The Europeans, still the only bloc of nations with truly binding carbon caps, were unhappy, hoping for a far stronger agreement. "There is light and there is shadow," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a strong proponent for ambitious climate action. "The only alternative to the agreement would have been failure." (See pictures of Himalayan glaciers under threat...