The researchers estimate that it would take about 15 years for the dust to eventually settle down to Earth, and it would take a substantial chuck of space junk with it.
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Part of why we call it junk mail is that it is not much more than that.
When a company's bonds are rated as "junk" it means some institutions will no longer invest in them.
Of course, they're going to throw junk on it and lard it up.
When a firm's bonds are rated as "junk" it means some institutions may no longer invest in them, making it harder for them to raise fresh capital.
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If parents prefer to molly-coddle their children with junk food it surely has something to do with their unwillingness to be more responsibly austere with their own diets.
Too many parents, she added, believed there was no alternative to junk food because it was cheap.
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In their scramble for quick returns, hedge funds have been buying junk as if it were going out of style.
Its credit rating has been downgraded by Moody's to "not prime" (a euphemism for junk) and it's losing its chief executive, Barry Tootell.
It eliminated the junk food from the a la cart program and removed it from the vending machines.
Then the mayor flew to Wall Street, which he boasted he would so impress with his forceful ideas that it would upgrade Miami's bond-rating from junk status. (It listened politely but remained unmoved.) It was then that a columnist, Carl Hiaasen, advised the mayor in the Miami Herald that, while in New York, he should visit Bellevue, an insane asylum of legend.
Three years ago it was junk bonds, bankruptcy paper and major market sectors like technology, retailing and finance.
Reed warns that if space junk is not removed it could mean that low-earth orbit might eventually become unusable.
The agency took an axe to the Portuguese sovereign rating slashing it by four notches and consigning it to junk status.
The sourpuss bond rating agencies weren't so sure and said they're reviewing Valero's BBB-credit rating and might downgrade it to junk status.
On still other occasions there was so much virtual junk on a page it would take even longer than usual to download.
The principal benefit is that it would help Clearwire reset its debt with lower interest rates and remove it from junk status bumping up against its credit limits.
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The tougher-to-please analysts at Egan-Jones rate it borderline junk.
You may feel most of it is junk mail, but you could also be missing out on important notices or deadlines if you do not open your mail in a timely manner.
You are stuck with the name, but anybody who owned a junk bond fund in 1991 and got a 40% or 50% return that year knows it's not junk.
On May 9, the China Securities Regulatory Commission announced that it will experiment with letting small and private companies issue junk bonds, a change that could make it easier for such companies to obtain credit.
And it reins in junk lawsuits that lead to defensive medicine and higher premiums.
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Keeping that in mind, I think one of my goals this year will be to never let my financial junk drawer look the way it did last month!
Greece, the first of the peripherals to implode and take bailout money, was also downgraded, sending it deeper into junk status. (Read Portuguese Parliament Rejects Austerity Plan, PM Socrates Resigns).
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Entangled in new products and the computer systems that support them, banks cannot even do something as basic as ensuring that customers who asked one department not to send junk mail do not receive it from another.
One agency that grades the fitness of a country's finances, Fitch Ratings, has put the country's debt rating at "junk" status, meaning it must pay a higher interest rate to attract borrowers who are not certain to be paid back.
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