One explanation is that, as bank loans begin to trade in the secondary markets like ordinary bonds, the banks themselves are less interested in preventing borrowers from imploding than when they kept the debt on their books.

ECONOMIST: Leveraged debt

Managers, like movie stars, regard themselves more as valuable individuals and less as members of a team.

ECONOMIST: A survey on pay

The change came as Itron's research group in Paris realized it could exploit inexpensive new wireless chips and open-source software to create a so-called mesh network of electric meters that passed information among themselves, like firemen in a bucket brigade, instead of relying on expensive and less reliable individual connections to the Internet.

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