Prolonged de-leveraging does not mean that the economy won't grow until the process is completed, but the rebalancing will likely put a drag on recovery.
Of course, "leverage" does not mean that supplying a few F-16 fighter planes buys you the compliance of a foreign army.
Michael D. Eisner, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, who has his own brands to leverage, does not have to cater to any toy makers.
However, CEO relative leverage does not seem to affect covenant usage in bond contracts, probably due to covenants being less valuable as a monitoring tool in public bond issues, compared to private loans.
But that leverage does not exist at, say, VoiceStream Communications, an upstart wireless company that has agreed to be acquired by Deutsche Telekom and that has virtually no union presence.
When we conduct our analysis separately for sub-samples of powerful and weak CEOs, we find that the connection between personal leverage and firm leverage does not exist in firms where the CEO does not serve a dual role, and in firms where the CEO has been in office for less than our sample median of four years.
Corporate over-leveraging does not occur by happenstance, however.
The absence of leverage does not preclude options.
The plan, probably too modest, went nowhere because France and America, owners of the gold needed for the leveraging, didn't like it.So the dominoes fell.
The stereotype of financially conservative Germans having an aversion to leverage doesn't apply to Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler-Thumann and her only son, Georg Schaeffler.
Mind you, just because Obama has all the leverage doesn't mean he'll use it!
