Industry experts and executives discount that notion, pointing out that most of the world's oil reserves are concentrated in the Middle East.
By January, after judicial and executive reviews had discounted even that reduced claim, the NSA began saying the value of the bulk phone data collection was more analogous to an "insurance" program.
In Detroit, employees get discounted cars, executives receive a new car once or even several times a year.
Mr. Hastings ignored the warning, believing that chief executives should generally discount what their friends say.
Sales at stores open at least a year fell 5percentt in the first quarter, a result, executives say, of discounting to match competitors and higher unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanics, who make up about two-thirds of Church's customer base.
The move was matched by late afternoon yesterday by Delta, Continental and US Airways, said Tom Parsons, chief executive of Bestfares.com, which sells discounted tickets.
Despite frustration over what the company and some Wall Street analysts viewed as an undervalued stock, Belo Chief Executive Robert Decherd had until recently discounted the possibility of a split, stressing the company's interest in remaining a newspaper/TV "hybrid".
So when Lennar Corp. Chief Executive Stuart Miller couldn't scoop up discounted land in the open market, he went shopping on Wall Street.
