In order to draw them down, agricultural and forestry practices would have to change dramatically as well.
So governments have been drawing them down as world rice consumption has outstripped production for most of the last decade.
Small-business customers are "drawing them down because they have real needs and we are extending additional commitments," said John C. Gerspach, Citigroup's chief financial officer.
Many have introduced time accounts, under which workers store up overtime hours during busy times and then draw them down by working fewer hours when business slows.
States usually add to their unemployment insurance trust funds in prosperous times, so they can draw them down in weak times.
"There's a lot of people out there concerned that banks will not have the capacity to front all of their commitments if everybody drew them down," said an executive at a large real estate investment trust.
Slightly more than 160,000 troops are now in Iraq, and President Bush is expected to agree to the military's plan to draw them down to 130,000 by next summer.
"There's a lot of people out there concerned that banks will not have the capacity to front all of their commitments if everybody drew them down," an executive at a large real estate investment trust told The Times.
Responding fire companies also encountered an unusual phenomenon: though fire and smoke usually rise in a high-rise fire, the powerful exhaust fans being used in the demolition drew them down toward the firefighters.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the delights of the city, the lure of rural life drew them down to Cornwall with the intention of starting a restaurant.
