fess up, sour, ravenous sinkhole

Audit Commission fesses up?

A systems thinker reports proceedings from a conference at which Gareth Davies, Managing Director of Local Government, Housing and Community Safety at the Audit Commission, spoke. The Achilles heel came early on: CPA scores (the scores made up by people who have to check compliance with specifications) show improvement, but public satisfaction with councils has fallen. Now, systems thinkers know this is because councils are working to targets and CPA scores are completely unreliable and invalid. But what does Davies think?


USA Today leads with a look at how many states continue to spend money as if the recession had all been a bad dream. As revenue continues to decrease, this unabashed spending means that many state budgets will fall deeper in the red over the coming months as most state leaders appear to be waiting to see how much they'll receive from Washington as part of the planned stimulus package. A lot of states "haven't really 'fessed up yet in terms of how bad it is," said the executive director of the National Governors Association.

Construction Loans Sour Small U.S. Banks

Billions in Troubled Construction Loans
Promise to Pose Test for Regional Lenders

Wall Street is bracing for regional and small banks to fess up to large losses from their mounting volume of soured construction loans made primarily to home builders.

A huge and ravenous sinkhole




James Nielsen/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press

A huge sinkhole, already one of the largest on record, near Daisetta, Tex., on Wednesday.

DAISETTA, Tex. — A huge and ravenous sinkhole that threatened to swallow this little East Texas oil town gobbled more crumbling earth Thursday but spared, at least for now, homes, the high school and the main road, Farm to Market 770.

sinkhole.滲穴
A natural depression in a land surface communicating with a subterranean passage, generally occurring in limestone regions and formed by solution or by collapse of a cavern roof.

ravenous

 rav・en²

━━ n. 略奪; 貪欲.
━━ vi. 略奪する ((about)); あさる ((for, after)).
━━ vt. 略奪する; がつがつ食う.
 rav・en・ing　━━ a. どん欲な.
 rav・en・ous
　━━ a. 飢えた; どん欲な ((for)).
RAVENOUSNESS

Meaning #1: excessive desire to eat
Synonyms: edacity, esurience, voracity, voraciousness

sour 
adjective
1 having a sharp, sometimes unpleasant, taste or smell, like a lemon, and not sweet:
These plums are a bit sour.

2 unfriendly or easily annoyed:
Overnight, it seemed, their relationship had turned sour.
She gave me a sour look.

sour
noun [C] MAINLY US
a drink made from strong alcohol, lemon or lime juice, sugar and ice:
a whisky sour

sour
verb [I or T]
1 to turn sour or to make something turn sour:
Hot weather sours milk.
Milk sours in hot weather.

2 to (cause to) become unpleasant or unfriendly:
Her whole attitude to life soured as a result of that experience.
This affair has soured relations between the two countries.

sourly 
adverb

sourness
noun [U]


fess up phrasal verb [I] INFORMAL
to admit that you have done something that someone else will not like:
Fess up - it was you who ate that last piece of cake, wasn't it?