Of Perfect Storms and Recipes

March 31, 2009
'Perfect storm'

Then there is the sorry state of Nortel's underfunded pension plan.

With the global recession and credit crunch rocking the industry, the prospects for Nortel raising sufficient funds from asset sales to refloat the plan and remaining operations are challenging.

"The pensioners are in a perfect storm," Mills said.

March 30, 2009
We need to talk of death in our perfect health storm

Ahead lies a perfect storm of an ageing and expanding population with a high burden of chronic disease. Spending on diabetes and dementia alone is expected to rise fourfold in the next 25 years. Costs to the states for health care are projected to double in the same period. New technologies and increased uptake mean that health costs increase more rapidly than economic growth, and we don't actually have any economic growth at the moment.

March 27, 2009
Police trying to avoid the 'perfect storm' after cuts

The cuts, Souza said, help create a “perfect storm,” where those who were expected to suppress crime are no longer working when difficult economic times are likely to lead to increased crime numbers.

March 26, 2009
'Perfect storm' puts all types in financial peril

The current financial crisis is all-inclusive; our path to prosperity or even simple financial stability seemingly obliterated.

March 25, 2009
Moonlight taxi driver can’t weather ‘the perfect storm’

Rob Taylor has been driving a taxi in Carbondale for 10 years, but said the slumping economy and university retention problems would drive him out of business within six weeks.

March 19, 2009
Food Shortages Will Cause Perfect Storm of War and Unrest

(ChattahBox)—BBC News reported today of a dire warning from England’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, predicting a crisis of a worldwide population increase to 8.3 billion, combined with food and energy shortages that will cause a perfect storm of war, unrest and mass migration by the year 2030.

March 11, 2009
The Perfect Storm

The most expensive presidential campaign in history and the cataclysmic financial meltdown of the past few months combined to produce a "perfect storm," Romero told me recently. The storm blew a $19 million hole in the ACLU's budget, resulting in a hiring freeze and the cancellation of various projects, followed by the announcement, in January, that 10 percent of the national staff was being let go. Employees with decades of experience were told to clear out their offices; no department was left unscathed.

That brings us to April Fool's Day and the perfect recipe.

April 1, 2009
Actually, Americans Are Not Saving Yet

After the short-term euphoria wears off from the Obama stimulus packages, we’ll be left to discover that we’ve not only squandered even more current and future savings, but that we have cooked up the perfect recipe for stagflation.