They depend too heavily on borrowing: many drank themselves silly during the credit boom and now have throbbing heads.
More recently, politicians have had to accept debt brakes and other devices to limit borrowing and many have submitted to external surveillance by independent monitors such as the U.K.'s Office for Budget Responsibility or, under the euro zone's Fiscal Pact, by the European Commission.
Ambrose published his first book in 1962 and has produced some 30 more since then, churning them out at such a steady clip that some critics wonder if he may have cut a few ethical corners along the way by borrowing too many improperly attributed passages from his sources.
The frenzy comes amid increasing debate about the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and the ease of borrowing that is leading many students to graduate with heavy debt loads.
With interest rates currently low, many companies are borrowing funds to repurchase corporate shares.
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At a time when many potential buyers' borrowing power is iffy, sellers favor offers they know will close quickly.
Record high unemployment in Eurozone countries has left many nations finding that borrowing costs are too high to allow government debt to be serviced without imposing crushing taxes and broken promises on the populous.
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Personal borrowing plays a key role in how many small business people finance their companies.
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At a time when many businesses must raise new borrowing to survive, that is a big mistake.
While many Conservatives claim that more borrowing would risk market confidence in the government's economic strategy, Mr Cable says "nobody knows how the markets might respond".
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But if your home's appreciation is lower than the annual cost of borrowing, as it has been for many over the last 20 years, leverage is not much of a friend.
But there has been limited progress towards the kind of political union - or central control of budget-making, borrowing and supervision of banks - that many would see as necessary to the eurozone's long-term survival.
Many countries should not have been borrowing much if anything, given their economic policies which discouraged success.
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That, in turn, implies considerable pooling of taxation and spending policies as well as borrowing, to a far greater extent than many had previously recognised across the 17 members.
Rohit Arora, CEO of Biz2Credit, says that in his experience, many women business owners start out borrowing for their businesses on personal credit cards, instead of establishing credit in the name of their businesses.
It also wouldn't hurt if the process of borrowing a e-book were less clunky at many libraries.
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The backlash came after Mr Brown did what many delegates believe he does best - borrowing Tory ideas.
As borrowing costs rose sharply in the euro zone, many called for a rapid response from the ECB to buy even more bonds.
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While many independent economists believe the cost of borrowing could have further to fall, a growing number are forecasting that the next move in rates could be up.
Many analysts now expect it to keep its borrowing rate on hold at 6% in July.
Unfortunately, additional federal borrowing will be a significant part of government funding for many years to come unless we want to risk major disruptions to various federal programs and a contraction of our economy.
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While many validly fear that the downgrade may impact borrowing costs for our country, the larger potential risk, in my opinion, could be related to the types of assets that certain institutions (i.e. banks) can hold on their respective balance sheets.
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Philip Isherwood, a strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, points out that the de-leveraging story was anyway a mixed one in America, where many companies merely amassed cash and left gross borrowing intact, while others in troubled sectors did not even do that.
How many have discovered a new franchise they love after borrowing a game from their friend?
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However, analysts said many mortgage lenders had not passed on the lower borrowing costs, while consumers feared that rates may climb again.
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Too many Republicans are fixating on the symptom of too much borrowing and paying insufficient attention to the underlying disease of too much spending.
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Rising borrowing is expected in economies at this stage of development, and many of the companies have experience lending in markets such as these.
What I discovered was a remarkable collection of management and financial talent, capable of identifying inexpensive companies, fixing them up, and extracting many times the initial investment through a sale or strategic borrowing.
Many students, however, say they have no trouble borrowing the money from their families and are confident the investment will pay off handsomely when they graduate with the freedom to find their own jobs and negotiate their pay.
But for many students today, this dream can only be realized through borrowing.
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