And with Citigroup lowering Wal-Mart's rating one day before the call, some were left wondering whether the bank was deliberating trying to frame EFCA as so calamitous for business that Congress would recoil from touching it.
Midway said its troubles came from a "calamitous drop in business traffic," low fares and high jet fuel prices.
The airline had filed for bankruptcy protection in August, blaming a "calamitous" drop in business traffic.Extra security at America's airports will push up costs even more.
McDonald's and other American fast-food outlets here -- KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee's -- have suffered a noticeable though not calamitous drop in business, American diplomats say.
The latest sign of that chaos came Monday night when Midway Airlines, blaming "a calamitous drop in business travel" and competition from Southwest and other low-fare airlines, filed for bankruptcy-law protection and made sharp reductions in its flight schedules.
Once seen as so habit-forming its users dubbed it the "CrackBerry", Blackberry has suffered a calamitous decline as rivals revolutionised the business it did so much to start.
Time Warner's embrace of the offer means that Mr. Bronfman may be poised to return to the entertainment industry, offering him a chance to repair his battered reputation just three years after he lost much of his family's fortune in a calamitous deal to sell the family business, Seagram, to Vivendi.
On Oct. 17, the government is set to run out of money to pay its bills, leading to a potential default by the United States, something that has never happened and which many economists and business leaders warn could be calamitous for the country and the economy.
He tried to restrict himself to a no-frills style, then sold the business to become a farmer, with calamitous economic results.
THE unlikely summer blockbuster of 2006, "An Inconvenient Truth" -- the global-warming documentary based on Al Gore's slide-show lecture -- proved that socially conscious movies about calamitous subjects could raise awareness and also do big business.
