But it turned out when you actually got in there and started looking at what they were doing, they were building a house of cards.

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"When I started out in the ophthalmology business 20 years ago, you barely heard anything about macular degeneration, " says Neurotech Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Edward Danse.

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And then when you finally got it out of your head, it really was 1999 and it started all over again.

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As you pointed out, I think at the beginning of this year, when we started the Jobs Council, I think all of us felt fairly confident that the economy could grow quickly enough that we could start bringing the unemployment rate down, even if it wasn't moving as quickly as we might like, but generally, the blue chip projections were somewhere between 3 and 4 percent growth.

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"That's quite a sacrifice to make when you're trying to get eyeballs on your website, " said McGowan, who started her reporting with a trip out to Marshall, Mich.

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