Because people used to sew and they needed a pin cushion.

He had to sit on a cushion, stand still, not move, because it was very painful.

An even larger portion would have been unprofitable without the government subsidies that cushion potential losses.

However, to the extent that public investment grows, aggregate demand increases correspondingly, generating some growth and creating a cushion against recession.

We therefore call for fairer rules to govern international business and trade, in particular measures to cushion the impacts of adverse changes.

It seeks to examine a set of policy measures aiming to cushion the impact of economic and social downturns and overcome prevailing conditions.

Such an arrangement would provide a cushion to protect investors from potential or unanticipated declines in the expected flow of revenue available for debt servicing.

In a few weeks, we will put in place a social safety net that will cushion the impact of high oil prices on the poor.

In recognition of these concerns, negotiating partners needed to seek to extend adequate transitory adjustment support measures to cushion developing countries from anticipated trade shocks.

He himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up, and told him, Teacher, don't you care that we are dying?

He himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up, and told him, Teacher, don't you care that we are dying?

Fortunately, China s relatively strong fiscal and foreign exchange positions can cushion the economy against short term shocks. And, notwithstanding corruption induced fragility, the bureaucracy s capacity to implement policy is sound.

Oil and gas export revenues were being paid into a national fund, to assure sustainable social and economic development and cushion the country against the impact of unfavourable external factors.

The rude awakening came when property values began to decline. For those without an equity cushion, refinancing was not a possibility, and rising interest rates have led to default, foreclosure, and homelessness.

However, even for financial systems, there is disagreement about other attributes, such as the ability to provide a financial cushion with which to soften the impact of unexpected economic downturns or turbulence.

58. Also requests the Secretary General to ensure that posts are not deliberately left vacant to provide a cushion for absorbing the costs of special missions and other activities authorized within available resources

The problem is imminent in North America, the Euro Area, and Japan. But, before long, many developing countries will also have to face up to it, and in many cases without a cushion of affluence.

In addition to providing a cushion for planning contingencies, the liquidity provision covers the cash flow imbalance that often occurs in the first quarter of the year, when disbursements can exceed receipts for regular resources.

Emerging market policymakers believe that they lack recourse to safety nets that would cushion the impact of volatile flows. Their efforts to self insure, by, say, building up their foreign exchange reserves, perpetuate global economic imbalances.

The deleveraging of governments, financial institutions, and households is one major cause of the sluggish economic recovery. But sluggish growth means less tax revenue and more demands for payments to cushion hardship, placing pressure on government budgets.

Borrowing and lending institutions will need to change, so that they better cushion people against the risk of personal bankruptcy. Financial markets will have to be broadened, so that people and businesses can better hedge their risks.

But they have not prevented a borrowing binge in their private sectors. Since private debts have a way of turning into public liabilities, a low government debt burden might not, in fact, provide these countries with the cushion that they think they have.

It thereby diverts policymakers attention from the main issues. If the financial crisis reveals a structural problem in banking, it is more likely to come from insufficient capital to cushion a bank s fall, or from too many financial institutions having become too big to fail.

Besides, what would a containment policy applied to Russia today look like? Russia s leaders, tucked behind the political safety cushion provided by high energy prices, rightly feel that time is working in their favor, that we in the West need Russia more than Russia needs us.

The discussion quickly turned to the difficulty of measuring inflation accurately and the need to build in a safety cushion to avoid deflation. According to Greenspan, Price stability is that state in which expected changes in the general price level do not effectively alter business and household decisions.

For fiscal policy, the crisis showed the value of maintaining low public debt and deficits during good times countries with healthier public finances have more space to cushion the economic impact of crises. But the Great Recession has caused public debt and deficits in many advanced economies to soar.

And it's a 35 key keyboard that is designed to fit both inside the scanner, be magnetically safe, have minimal interference that would contribute to any artifact and have this cushion so that it can rest on the players' legs while they're lying down in the scanner, playing on their back.

Ideally, they would develop a set of specially tailored financial tools. For example, raising banks capital requirements when credit is booming could restrain lending and strengthen banks cushion against losses, while setting ceilings on loan to value ratios could rein in exuberant property markets, thereby heading off excessive risks for borrowers and lenders.

But, in an economy where debt has exploded to more than 200 of GDP, it is not easy to rein in growth gradually without triggering widespread failure of ambitious investment projects. Even in China, where the government has deep pockets to cushion the fall, one Lehman Brothers size bankruptcy could lead to a major panic.

If economic structures were dissimilar, then the second criterion became critical Were arrangements in place to adjust to asymmetric shocks? The two key arrangements that most economists emphasized were fiscal transfers, which could cushion shocks in badly affected regions, and labor mobility, which would allow workers from such regions to move to less affected ones.

NEWPORT BEACH Some two years into Egypt s grass roots revolution, the country s economy is in a worrisome downward spiral. A growing number of people, inside and outside of the country, are starting to blame the revolution itself for derailing an economy that was growing, reducing its external debt burden, and maintaining a comfortable cushion of international reserves.

It is likely to yield little cushion for employment and income per dollar spent, while servicing the large debt accumulation will impede long run growth, either by forcing substantial future tax increases or spending cuts, or by forcing central banks to inflate. Indeed, China frets over the safety of the US Treasury bonds that it holds.

Stocks to use ratios are a primary driver of commodity prices, because they give us an indication of the cushion that we have for shortfalls somewhere in the world. The ratio tells us essentially how many months of stocks we have, and today they are around 15 for some key commodities meaning two months of stocks.

The IMF has already moved quickly to help many of our member countries in this time of crisis, including by protecting social spending in order to cushion the impact of the crisis on the most vulnerable. The lending reforms adopted this week will enable us to be even more flexible and responsive in assisting even more countries.

The government s Reserve Fund, created to cushion the economy from a fall in oil prices, stands at 140 billion, and the National Welfare Fund, intended mainly to solve the coming pension crisis, holds another 30 billion. The NWF, though not yet officially a sovereign wealth fund, is already among the 10 largest such funds, rivaling the Brunei Investment Agency.

In 2006, the EU established a Globalization Adjustment Fund to cushion those sectors hardest hit by rising imports. Though the Fund initially was allocated only 500 million, a rather modest sum compared to the overall annual EU budget of around 100 billion, its creation was an important signal of the EU s readiness to compensate those who lose out from a common policy.

Reaching the wrong agreement to defuse the austerity bomb, or cushion the economy from its impact, would merely recreate America s long run structural budget deficit 160 a very bad outcome. Failure to take all four steps outlined above all but guarantees renewed recession in America, even if a good agreement is reached on stretching out the tax hikes and spending cuts.

This does not mean that official funding should be junior to private debt in any restructuring, for that would require substantially more loss bearing capacity from the official sector capacity that is probably not available. Indeed, if official funding were junior, it would be providing a larger cushion to private creditors and thus bailing them out to an even greater extent.

In fact, given an increasingly unequal distribution of income between capital and labor (as well as across the income spectrum for labor) a larger store of public assets certainly has merit, as it equalizes the distribution of capital and wealth, albeit indirectly. Not only can public assets be used to cushion shocks and counter adverse trends they can also help fund an expansion of social insurance.

As for the economic crisis, bailouts and stimulus packages on the order of billions of dollars, euros, yen, or yuan have been planned or implemented to stem the further slide of the global economy. But, while references to the Great Depression are justified, the lesson of that crisis, and of the New Deal, is that effective programs can at best cushion the fall and bring about stabilization.

For example, how would Greece (or any country) exit the euro in order to cushion the extreme downward wage adjustment required to regain competitiveness, and to avoid the severe social unrest that could result from reining in debt too rapidly? As soon as word got out that Greece was seriously considering such a move well before it could even generate a new drachma currency euro bank deposits would flee Greece.

Some of the new debt that resulted from the stimulus could well end up being impaired, but ongoing urbanization around 15 20 million people per year move to cities provides enormous support on the demand side for investment in infrastructure development and residential and commercial construction. That tempers the risks to credit quality and, along with relatively low loan to deposit ratios of around 65 , should cushion the Chinese banking system.

Much of this failure is the result of the Bush administration s policies, which effectively eroded the capacities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government agency primarily responsible for dealing with disasters. Obsessed with the war on terror as well as an ideology of privatizing the functions of government, the administration systematically sapped FEMA s long term ability to prevent disaster or at least cushion the blows when prevention is not possible.