Correlations also tend to go up when property companies chase the same sort of tenants and locations: a portfolio of city-centre office buildings full of blue-chip banks looked stable until the crisis.

ECONOMIST: Prime numbers

Looked at anecdotally, a stable dollar would release countless great minds presently serving as facilitators into producer roles in the economy.

FORBES: A Gold Standard Would Be Great, But It's Not a Deficit Cure

Unlike Latin American governments, some of whom are recidivist bad debtors, Caribbean countries, with stable currencies and democracies, until recently looked like good risks.

ECONOMIST: Debt in the Caribbean

Every way I looked at it the velocity of money was anything but stable and the volume of goods and services produced went up and down on the basis of what the expectations were of the future.

FORBES: An Unemployment Report That Screams Spectacular Failure

The company is big, stable and regulated, and regulators in Georgia have looked kindly on the project.

FORBES: Southern Co., Westinghouse Win First Nuke Loan Guarantee

Looked at another way, about 90 percent reported having active or stable pipelines.

FORBES: Whither Contract Research Organizations: A Glass Half Full?

The authors looked at whether employee-owned firms in the same industry were more or less stable in their hiring and firing than their less enlightened peers.

ECONOMIST: Economics focus