Losses of even a few thousand sergeants, petty officers and experienced mid-grade officers, when we are trying to expand the Army and Marine Corps, could be crippling.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Gays and the military: a bad fit

All countries that have defaulted since the mid-1970s had their grade cut to junk by ratings agencies at least a year beforehand.

ECONOMIST: Credit-rating agencies

Here are several mid-caps that make the grade with the guru strategies I use to pinpoint promising investments.

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And tackling it would entail limiting the share of candidates allowed to get each grade, as happened until the mid-1980s.

ECONOMIST: A-level results

Since the mid-1990s, the proportion of 12th-grade pupils who believe smoking a packet or two of cigarettes a day carries a great risk has risen by about ten percentage points.

ECONOMIST: But efforts to warn people off drugs are still too timid

Likewise, the neighboring 559 units of Golden Lane Estate built in 1963 by the same architects, also Grade II though less costly, are eagerly snapped up by mid century design purists.

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In mid-1997, for instance, companies whose debt was only just investment-grade paid a mere 0.2 percentage points more to borrow long-term than did the most creditworthy Japanese firms, according to the Bank of Japan.

ECONOMIST: Small Japanese companies

In the mid-1990s individual loans looked appealing to investors, but their ratings (often below investment grade) made them too risky for conservative types.

ECONOMIST: Banks in trouble