This downturn is already grim for housebuilders, but the coming months could be heady times for prison builders.Demand for jail places is already bumping up against supply, thanks to the extravagant use of custodial sentences in recent years.
"The prognosis for the IOCs [international oil companies] was already grim before governments became serious about climate change and the oil price collapsed … their old business model is dying," said Stephens, a visiting professor at University College London.
Members of Italy's university community view the new law as salt in the wound, an aggravation of a situation that was already grim.
The picture for nursing homes in New York is already grim.
But considering that clinics have been devastated, prices for essentials are soaring and the maternal health situation was already grim before the disaster, thousands of pregnant women and new moms simply can't get access to the health care they need, according to UNFPA.
Members of Congress have set out to find the bulk of their budget savings in programs like Medicaid, child-support enforcement, food stamps and subsidized child care, even though poor people are already facing increasingly grim prospects, particularly here in New York.
Small businesses are already contemplating the grim decision whether to lay off workers or pay the fine and dump their employees from company-provided health plans.
"People will be expecting more bad news on top of what is already a grim situation," he said.
There was already a grim compensation system in place: "The loss of a full right arm from the shoulder downwards was worth sixteen shillings a week.
For them, air travel is already a grim reality of high fares, interminable check-in lines, overcrowded planes, endless delays and in-flight meals that are stingy when they are offered at all.
