The stock prices of networking equipment companies like Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks sometimes seem as if they are priced for perpetual success.
Electronic communications networks match trades between investors directly, without using a market maker or specialist as an intermediary.
Higher productivity enables companies to increase sales without adding workers. Even if job markets tighten and wages rise, corporate profits can continue to climb as long as worker productivity is growing faster than overall wages.
African runners regularly work out in the United States and Europe, and the International Olympic Committee sends some of the cash from the Games to Olympic committees in poor nations, which use the money to finance their own programs.