However, some in the City welcomed the size of the reduction, which boosted the pound, saying a bigger move could have accelerated the recent slide of sterling.
Given the size of the reduction, "We felt an obligation to inform people as quickly as we could," a Wal-Mart spokesman, John Simley, said.
In determining the size of the reduction of the British troops, Mr. Brown has had to deal with three constituencies: the British electorate; the British Army, whose commanders have complained about the Iraq deployment stretching the military too thin; and the White House.
A26 Congress Tackles Tax Cuts Congress resumed and Congressional Republicans quickly set out to devise a strategy to enact President Bush's proposed tax cut and repair a rift between House and Senate leaders over the size of the reduction.
Mr. Obama will not announce the next troop reduction at the NATO meeting, aides said on Monday, but the size of the reduction will flow from the NATO decision on when to shift the mission in Afghanistan from combat to support.
That will leave school budgets about $178 million smaller than last year's — a cut about half the size of the reduction schools faced last year, which averaged 4.2 percent below the budget of the previous year.
Long Island takes a bigger hit from Mr. Cuomo's cuts because the governor's budget takes into account a school district's wealth in computing the size of the reduction in state aid.
To avoid such a disaster entirely, or reduce its impact, the households in the model would be willing to pay a permanent consumption tax of up to 15%, depending on the size of the reduction and the likelihood of catastrophe.In theory, then, governments should be able to spend far less than 15% to minimise the danger of catastrophes without suffering (political) risk.
The size of the reduction varies by instance family and region.
But he said the size of the reduction - the biggest since the survey began - was "unexpected".
