| Credit Card Industry Booming, Despite Treacherous Stock Market This ...
No, that's not your spouse (or even your accountant) talking. Rather, it's an admonition that may be a useful guide to navigating a treacherous stock market this fall — the time that has historically been less than an auspicious season for stocks … and this one looks particularly dicey. At issue: whether the shutdown in vast swaths of the credit markets will ripple through the rest of the economy. So far, officials from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have assured investors that the mortgage mess bears watching, but it's still pretty well contained. In other words, a few hundred thousand families, or perhaps a few million will lose their homes, but outside of that, the consumer economy will not suffer. That myth is increasingly showing cracks.
Born on floor of trailer as snow raged, Michigander is 30 today
He sat on a bench seat in the back as Robert Norris, now a retired National Guardsman, chauffeured him. "We had some personnel carriers out of Ft. Custer," Norris said. They had tank "tracks on them and you steered with a stick." Norris drove Milliken's predecessor George Romney to work the same way when a storm in 1967 closed roads. President Jimmy Carter declared the state a disaster area and offered federal aid to pay private contractors to help crews clear the streets. So what made that storm so fierce? Experts said two weather fronts, one from the north bringing single-digit temperatures and another from the south bringing plenty of moisture, converged on the state. In 1978, Deedler was a young meteorologist working the midnight shift at the office in Ann Arbor.
Housing market in Rapid City still steady
It doesn't necessarily mean your house is worth $10,000 more than it was a year ago. An increase in the number of expensive-home sales can raise the average. But the fact that home values are increasing is a good sign, especially for people with mortgages.New constructionOn the construction side, building permits for single-family homes is down about 18 percent in Rapid City and Pennington County in the first eight months of the year. The city and county have issued 259 permits for single-family homes through the end of August.Jennifer Landguth of Lage Development said buyers remain interested in new homes.She said 1,100 people toured Lage's entry in the recent Parade of Homes. Lage primarily builds custom homes, and she said her business has been good this year.Box Elder builder Ken Skyberg said Ellsworth Air Force Base is keeping his contracting business busy.
Hamas 'spent months cutting through Gaza wall in secret operation'
Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours. But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches. That meant that when the explosive charges were set off in 17 different locations between midnight and 1am the 40ft wall came tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the middle of no-man's land as an estimated 350,000 Gazans flooded into Egypt. .
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