In theory, the banking system had entered the crisis with comfortably thick cushions.
Oil prices rose during the first half of 2008, giving such countries a thick cushion of cash.
They are not required to have thick cushions of capital to absorb losses or large chunks of cash to see them through hard times.
One good way to understand the importance of capital is to look at the fate of firms that entered the crisis with relatively thick cushions.
The ceiling was made of five layers of material: particleboard; two layers of sound board, which functions as a thick cushion; plywood; and Sheetrock.
As Mr. Burke trimmed his roast, he noted that many cooks leave the thick cushion of fat on while roasting to keep the meat moist.
In Chittisinghpora, we were greeted warmly, taken into a brightly painted house and seated solicitously on the floor, as is the custom, with thick cushions for our backs.
But the federal government plans to unplug the economic life-support programs that stimulated production, kept interest rates low and placed a thick cushion under the real estate market.
Cosy and Tyrolean, all chunky wooden benches and piles of thick cushions, it was just what we needed, and two enormous wiener schnitzels and grüner veltliners later, we headed gratefully up to bed.
Gibson created a highly influential theory of "affordances," which are qualities of an object or environment that communicate opportunities to do certain things (e.g., dark shade indicates an opportunity to get out of the sunshine; a thick cushion signals the availability of comfortable seating).
Lying back on the thick cushions of an armchair in his villa, with the windows curtained against an angry sun that was threatening to evaporate the Zaire River as it slid like a grassy ocean past his front door, he talked with the quiet contentment of a man whose thoughts were acting on him as comfortingly as the hands of a good masseur.
