When markets are uncertain, profits are down, and their share prices have fallen, banks have few options.
The private finance initiative guaranteed, direct from taxpayers, revenue streams for big companies, instead of the uncertain profits of true competitive markets in education or health.
Because information about the future is speculative, a premium is placed on the present, and short-term profits are preferred over uncertain profits later.
The story of YouTube, so far, is not necessarily the story of the business of the future; it's too strange a place and too uncertain a profit model to inspire copycats.
Lastly, it investigates how the competition (between retailers) factor influences the decision-making of supply chain members in response to uncertain demand and profit variability.
There were 32 initial offerings in the first quarter, down from 106 in the same period of 2000, leaving venture capital funds with an uncertain path to profits.
But the current patchwork of government inducements remains generally insufficient as a draw for American companies and investors to jump into new fields like wind power, energy-efficient appliances or even mass-market insulation, because upfront costs are large and profits uncertain.
Unlike their European counterparts, American operators have not paid vast sums for the right to enter an uncertain market where profits are years away.Furthermore, it is American rather than European firms that seem to be benefiting from the convergence of mobile telephones with the Internet.
All this has led to a simple equation: Revenues are slow to come, profits uncertain, debt mounting and new investors hard to come by.
Labels will be going in the other direction, accustomed to certain profits and uncertain of how to proceed without those profits.
